Fremantle takes Baghdad to Cannes

Baghdad Central is based on Elliott Colla’s novel

Fremantle will be at MipTV next month with a slate led by a crime drama from writer Stephen Butchard, a Spanish series from Oscar winners Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain and a doc fronted by Samuel L Jackson.

Butchard’s Baghdad Central has been produced by Euston Film for Channel 4 in the UK. The 6×60’ drama is based on the novel by Elliott Colla and is set amid the chaos of the US occupation of Iraq in 2003.

La Jauria, meanwhile, is a Spanish-language psychological thriller fro Fabula and Fremantle for TVN in Chile. It follows a branch of the police specialising in gender-related crimes.

Production and distribution giant Fremantle’s scripted slate for Cannes also includes two 6×60’ period dramas: Beecham House, produced by Bend It TV for ITV; and The Luminaries, from Working Title Films and Southern Light Films for BBC2 in the UK and TVNZ in New Zealand.

Dublin Murders (8×60’) from Euston Films, Veritas Entertainment Group and Element Pictures for BBC1 in the UK and Starz in the US is also slated. The psychological thriller has been adapted from the first two novels in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad crime series.

French drama The Last Wave (6×60’), from Kwai for pubcaster France 2, sees a group of surfers engulfed by an enormous wave off the coast of Biarritz return home days later with no memory of where they have been or what happened to them.

Face to Face (8×30’), from Miso Film production for Scandi SVoD service Viaplay, opens with a forensic officer asked to examine a body that turns out to be that of his daughter, who has apparently committed suicide. Another Miso production for Viaplay, Darkness: Those Who Kill (8×45’) rounds out the drama slate.

In non-scripted, the line-up is led by Enslaved (6×60’) from Associated Producers and Cornelia Street. The series is exec produced and hosted by Pulp Fiction star Samuel L Jackson, who charts the horrifying journeys that brought millions of Africans into slavery in the New World.

Punk is a four-part docuseries from executive producer John Varvatos and The Stooges frontman Iggy Pop that features original interviews with pioneers of the genre. It originally aired on Epix in the US.

The BBC2 and UKTV coproduction Expedition with Steve Backshall is also included, as is 1×120’ feature doc I Am Richard Pryor, from Network Entertainment for US cablenet Paramount.

Another Paramount feature, I Am Jackie O, about on former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, rounds out the slate.