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THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL BBC follow success of The Night Manager with new John le Carré thriller
After the success of The Night Manager, it's no surprise the BBC have returned to the John le Carré well. This autumn sees a lavish adaptation of his 70s set thriller The Little Drummer Girl in which a young actress gets dragged into a dangerous world of espionage after she strikes up a friendship with an Israeli intelligence ofi cer in Greece. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this new
series is that it marks the television debut of noted Korean director Park Chan-wook, famed for his visceral, yet stunningly beautiful, depictions of revenge and violence (including Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and Stoker). Chan-wook has always had an afi nity for thrillers, taking inspiration from the master. 'I was watching Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock at university,' he explains, 'there is a sequence following the female that is very lengthy and it looks like something unrealistic, like you are dreaming,
and I fell in love with the sequence and thought, I'm going to be a i lm director.' The Little Drummer Girl features an impressive international cast headed by Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth), Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, Big Little Lies) and Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire, The Shape of Water) while Chan-wook directs all six episodes. 'Of le Carré’s many masterpieces, the one I love ahead of any other is The Little Drummer Girl,’ says the director. ‘At the core of this story is an extremely painful, but thrilling, romance. This is what makes the story universal, reaching beyond borders and languages and remaining incredibly current. To adapt such a great work, without losing its integrity, it needs the time and depth of a television series.' (Henry Northmore) ■ The Little Drummer Girl is on BBC One, Oct (date tbc).
100 THE LIST 1 Sep–31 Oct 2018