ZDF Studios Teams with World Media Rights for Spy Docudrama

ZDF Studios and World Media Rights have partnered to co-produce The Lost Women Spies, a docudrama about the fate of British female spies in WWII.

The six-parter tells the story of Vera Atkins of the Secret Operations Executive (SOE), who was tasked with finding women in the U.K. who could pass as French and train them as spies to be sent to the frontline. Their stories were hidden away until 2000, when boxes containing top-secret files were found in a garden shed in Cornwall that detailed the lives of these female agents.

Atkins had collected the papers and hidden them away, knowing that sending women to the frontline was illegal in World War II. Churchill desperately needed agents who the Nazis would not detain in France, so he ignored the law. The British authorities covered up the women’s fate, as many of them had suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis as a result. Atkins was eventually horrified by the consequences of what she had done. She was unable to tell the real story of her spies in her lifetime, but when she died, she let it be known that all her records had been sent to her sister’s garden shed in Cornwall.

The series is set for completion in March 2024.

Nikolas Hülbusch, Director Unscripted at ZDF Studios, said: “The Lost Women Spies follows in the footsteps of War Gamers, our co-production for Curiosity Stream in 2023, about the women who worked out the U-boat tactics in WWII. Both titles explore the history of women in that war and has the same style and feel. As War Gamers was a huge success internationally, we know that there is a genuine demand from viewers wanting to discover more about women in war.”

Alan Griffiths, CEO of World Media Rights, said: “Due to ZDF Studios’ support and vision, we can now tell this unknown story of the Second World War for the first time. There are very few series about what happened after the war ended and, in many ways, the aftermath was as horrifying as the war itself, particularly for Vera Atkins.”