Sherlock’s Steve Thompson to Adapt County Guides to Murder

Screenwriter and playwright Steve Thompson (Sherlock, Jericho, Deep State, Doctor Who) has signed on to adapt Ian Sansom’s The County Guides to Murder books into a multi-part series for TV.

Bryncoed Productions secured the rights to the books, marking the first major literary option to be signed by the recently launched Canterbury-based company. The books center on Swanton Morley, a.k.a. the People’s Professor, who is compiling a series of guides of the counties in England. Unfortunately, mysterious murders keep getting in the way of his academic endeavors. The stories are set against the backdrop of 1930s Britain.

Foz Allan, founder and CEO of Bryncoed Productions, said: “The Great British Bake Off would have been ridiculed in the 1970s—in that age of convenience, nobody was interested in old-fashioned baking. But we’re now fascinated by those skills and love the connection they give us to our past. And so it is with the County Guides to Murder. On the one hand, The County Guides are a topographical study of the folklore, crafts and traditions of 1930s England. On the other, they are immensely clever murder mysteries, inspired by the Golden Age of British detective fiction.”