Falling with Keeley Hawes & Paapa Essiedu Coming to Channel 4

Channel 4 has lined up a new love story drama starring Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu, produced by The Forge Entertainment, a Banijay UK company (National Treasure, The Buccaneers, Marriage).

The drama, Falling, just wrapped filming in Southwest England. The series marks BAFTA Award-winning writer Jack Thorne’s (Adolescence, Help) first-ever love story, starring Hawes (Scoop, Miss Austen) as a devoted nun with Essiedu (Black Mirror, The Lazarus Project) as a Catholic priest.

As both characters are committed to the church, they are forced to reconcile the consequences of falling in love with one another. Falling is an honest and witty contemporary romantic drama.

Thorne said “I never thought I’d write a love story, but I am very excited to be making one with the brilliant Peter Hoar. We feel so lucky we have persuaded the mighty (and lovely) Keeley Hawes, the brilliant (and also lovely) Paapa Essiedu and the most amazing company of (lovely) actors to come make this with us, The Forge and Channel 4.”

Falling is executive produced by George Ormond, George Faber and Thorne with Joe Donaldson (Cobra, Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders) as the producer and Peter Hoar (It’s A Sin, The Last of Us, Umbrella Academy) as the director.

The star-studded cast also includes Rakie Ayola (The Pact, Kaos), Jason Watkins (Coma, The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies), Niamh Cusack (The Virtues, Heartbeat), Adrian Scarborough (Gavin and Stacey, The Chelsea Detective), David Dawson (My Policeman, The Last Kingdom), Susan Brown (Mr Bates vs The Post Office, It’s A Sin), Sandra Voe (Howards End, Vera Drake) and newcomers Holly Rhys and Shayde Sinclair.

The contemporary romance has been commissioned for Channel 4 and will be distributed internationally by Banijay Rights.

“I’m thrilled to be taking on the role of Anna and so looking forward to working alongside the brilliant Paapa Essiedu to bring Jack Thorne’s beautiful scripts to life,” Hawes said.

Essiedu commented, “Falling is a story that has Jack Thorne’s singular talent of mining the sublime out of the ordinary running all the way through. I can’t wait to work with Keeley, Peter and the rest of the team to bring this world to life.”

Gwawr Lloyd, commissioning editor of drama, added, “The combination of Keeley Hawes and Paapa Essiedu, alongside Jack Thorne’s incredible scripts and Peter Hoar’s direction means this will be the most extraordinary show. We are so excited to bring this unique and compelling love story to Channel 4.”