ZDF Studios, World Media Rights collaborate on The Lost Women Spies

ZDF Studios World Media Rights are coproducing The Lost Women Spies

Germany’s ZDF Studios (ZDFS) and London-based prodco World Media Rights (WMR) are coproducing a documentary drama series about Britain’s first female secret agents.

The Lost Women Spies (6×50′) is based on the real events that saw British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinet ignore the UK’s laws banning women from combat and send female agents to Nazi-occupied France in 1942.

Vera Atkins of the Secret Operations Executive (SOE) was in charge of training the spies, many of whom suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and never came back.

Currently in production and due to be completed by March, it comes after WMR Productions got hold of top secret files, kept safe by Atkins, that detailed the lives of the agents.

ZDFS and ZDFS-backed WMR have previously collaborated on projects including War Gamers, last year’s documentary for Curiosity Stream about the women who worked out the U-boat tactics in WWII.

Nikolas Hülbusch, director of unscripted at ZDFS, said: “As War Gamers was a huge success internationally, we know that there is a genuine demand from viewers wanting to discover more about women in war.”

Alan Griffiths, CEO of WMR, said: “There are very few series about what happened after the war ended and, in many ways, the aftermath was as horrifying as the war itself, particularly for Vera Atkins.”