Filming will get underway this week in the Cumbrian countryside on a brand new ITV drama starring Marcella‘s Anna Friel.
Deep Water, a new six-part series commissioned by Polly Hill at ITV, “follows the lives of three complex and vibrant women, each struggling to keep their heads above very deep water. Like all of us, they seek to do their best for their families, but face tough choices with difficult, and often messy repercussions. The women are connected by the school gates, each with children around the same age.”
Friel will play exhausted and frayed mother Lisa Kallisto in the show, who is juggling a frantic home life with running her own business. The series is based on the Windermere series of novels by Paula Daly, and has been adapted by Anna Symon (Indian Summers).
Several of Friel’s co-stars have also been revealed, with Sinead Keenan (Little Boy Blue) playing a physiotherapist called Roz. The bumf from ITV describes Keenan’s character as once having had “a thriving private practice, but the debts run up by her soulmate Winston leave the family facing financial ruin. If she can pay off their debts they will get their lives back on track. Roz is offered help from an unexpected quarter. The decision she makes could change the course of her life.”
Rosalind Eleazar (Howards End) stars as Kate, “a wealthy and attractive” woman “with a well-drilled and highly organised family life” but she may be too good to be true, and Friel’s Lisa will run into some serious trouble after a dinner party with Kate that goes extremely wrong.
ITV says that the new series is an exploration of what it means to be a ‘perfect’ mother.
“Anna has cleverly woven together two of Paula’s brilliant novels, to create a wonderful modern and layered series,” remarked Polly Hill. “It’s about three very different women on their own incredible and often shocking journeys, whose lives connect at the school gates. It’s funny, sexy, truthful and often outrageous, and should have the audience asking what they would do to hold their own family together. I am delighted to be working with Kudos on this great new series for ITV.”
More on Deep Water as we get it.