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STV PRODUCTIONS SECURES DRAMA SERIES COMMISSION

24th August 2017

STV Productions has secured its first BBC drama series commission. The four part thriller for BBC One, The Victim - written by Rob Williams (The Man in the High Castle, Chasing Shadows) - will be filmed in Scotland early next year.

Executive producers are Sarah Brown and Rob Williams for STV Productions and Elizabeth Kilgarriff and Gaynor Holmes for BBC One.

Sarah Brown, head of drama at STV Productions, said: "We are thrilled to have secured this commission from the BBC and excited to start filming in Scotland.

"STV is committed to investing in the Scottish creative industries and this high quality drama will be a great boost for TV production in Scotland.

"I look forward to working with the team at BBC One to make a captivating thriller that will challenge the audience, raise some thought-provoking questions and have viewers hooked from the very start."

The Victim is a gripping, contemporary legal thriller told through the eyes of the plaintiff and the accused. Set in Edinburgh, within Scotland's unique legal system, the show offers a constantly surprising and twisting perspective on who is really 'the victim'.

Carl, a hard working family man from Dundee, is the victim of a random, unprovoked attack, after being identified online as a notorious child murderer living under a new identity. With his life collapsing around him, should Carl keep his head down and pray for the smoke to clear - or try to prove his innocence? Is he simply the tragic victim of mistaken identity or the dangerous killer he is suspected of being?

Anna is the mother of a teenage boy who was murdered twenty years ago by a then fourteen-year old boy. Having campaigned to be told of the killer's new identity and whereabouts, she is then accused of revealing his identity online and conspiring to have him murdered. Has the anger of a grieving mother turned her into a criminal too? What exactly is she guilty of - and what is she capable of doing in her son's name?

Played out through the lens of one criminal trial, moral dilemmas will be thrown up and sides will be taken in these two very different quests for justice.

The Victim has been commissioned by Piers Wenger, Controller of BBC Drama, and Charlotte Moore, Director of BBC Content.

Ends.

For further information, please contact the STV press office:-

Ellen Drummond

0141 300 3341

ellen.drummond@stv.tv  

Anna Hendry

0141 300 3830

anna.hendry@stv.tv

STV Productions

STV Productions is one of the UK's leading content businesses with ambitious plans for domestic and international growth.

The company has a record of success across a range of genres, including drama, entertainment and factual, for a wide range of broadcasters. Ratings winner Antiques Road Trip has run for fourteen series on the BBC, along with a further six series of sister programme Celebrity Antiques Road Trip. A further four series of Antiques Road Trip and a seventh series of Celebrity Antiques Road Trip are now in production.

In entertainment, the company has produced five series of Catchphrase for ITV, and two series of Safeword for ITV2, as well as new reality format Tour de Celeb for Channel 5 and The Dressing Room for UKTV's entertainment channel W.

Specialist factual successes have included Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered for BBC1, Smithsonian Channel and Discovery Canada and Swallowed By The Sea - Ancient Egypt's Greatest Lost City for BBC2 and Life After: Chernobyl for Animal Planet US.

In documentaries, Dunblane: Our Story for BBC2, commemorating one of the most tragic days in Scotland's modern history, won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Single Documentary.

Other STV Productions documentaries include: Prison: First and Last 24 hours, with a second eight-part series on Sky1; Scotland and the Battle for Britain presented by Andrew Marr for BBC Two; The Lockerbie Bombing for the Smithsonian Channel and ITV; The 7/7 Bombing: Survivors' Stories for ITV; Rollermania for BBC Scotland and BBC4; The Queen Mary: Greatest Ocean Liner, a documentary for BBC Scotland, BBC Four and Smithsonian Channel; and Fire in the Night, a feature documentary to mark the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, which won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Single Documentary and the Audience Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The latest STV documentary commission, for ITV's autumn 2017 'Crime & Punishment' series, is the film Ross Kemp In Jail - Inside Barlinnie.

STV Productions has a track record of producing quality returnable drama series including Taggart and Rebus with ambitions to build on this reputation. In the last five years it has produced Fast Freddie and The Poison Tree, both for ITV. It currently has a number of script commissions from the BBC and ITV.

STV Productions works with a number of leading international sales agents that distribute STV Productions' completed programmes and formats outside the UK.

In August 2015, STV Productions entered a strategic development partnership with Motion Content Group to create new entertainment, factual and drama projects for the UK and international markets.