Mrs. Churchill Drama In The Works At PBS Masterpiece
28.07.2022 - 19:17
/ deadline.com
PBS is developing a drama series based on the public and private life of Clementine Churchill, wife of British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
The U.S. public broadcaster is working with Maven Screen Media, the production company set up by Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler, Origin Pictures, the producer of HBO and Sky’s Catherine the Great, on five-part series Mrs. Churchill (w/t).
Margaret Nagle, who previously wrote on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, is writing.
The project was previously being developed as a feature film, as revealed by Deadline in 2018.
It is the story of a fiercely independent and very modern heroine who risked everything to save her country and the world from fascism–and her husband from himself. Clementine’s story has slipped through the cracks of history. The magnitude of her many achievements are only recently being recognized.
Each episode of the limited series will follow Clementine through pivotal moments of her life. Raised by an unstable mother in relative poverty, caring for her siblings, Clementine became a suffragette working two jobs. Known as the “Broke Beauty,” she refused to marry for money or to a man she didn’t love. The series will follow her courtship with Winston and struggle with motherhood, her broken relationship with her young niece, Diana Mitford, who was brainwashed by fascism, her pivotal relationship with American Harry Hopkins, known as FDR’s conscience, who held the purse strings to (yet to be created) Land Lease, ensuring England could survive against the Germans until America joined the war, and a climactic trip to Russia where she goes toe to toe with Stalin.
Celine Rattray, Trudie Styler, David Thompson, Sayako Teitelbaum, Susanne Simpson and Margaret Nagle will