Hugh Grant joins BBC’s Scandal

Hugh Grant in Love Actually

UK actor Hugh Grant will return to TV for the first time since the early 1990s to star in forthcoming BBC drama A Very English Scandal.

The 3×60′ production was revealed earlier this month by new controller of drama commissioning Piers Wenger.

Written by Doctor Who scribe Russell T Davies and directed by Stephen Frears, the show is based on the eponymous book by John Preston. Blueprint Pictures produces.

Grant will play real-life disgraced politician Jeremy Thorpe, who in 1979 was tried but acquitted of conspiring to murder his ex-lover Norman Scott.

The drama documents the true story of Thorpe, who was the leader of the Liberal party and became the first British politician to stand trial for conspiracy and incitement to murder.

Grant is the latest in a long line of movie actors to move to TV. His credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually.