Topic Picks Up Murder at the Cottage Docuseries

Topic has acquired the exclusive on-demand rights in the U.S. and Canada for Jim Sheridan’s Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie.

The series sees the filmmaker search for answers about the violent murder of French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier at her holiday home in the Irish countryside in 1996. The first two episodes will debut on Topic on August 4.

New episodes will be released every Thursday over the three weeks following August 4.

Piecing together original evidence, never-before-seen footage and interviews with those closest to the case, Sheridan tries to make sense of what happened that night. In 2019, the key suspect, English journalist Ian Bailey—the first reporter on the scene—was found guilty in absentia by the French courts but was never found guilty in Ireland due to a lack of reliable evidence. 25 years later, Bailey maintains his innocence.

The Sky Original docuseries is produced by Sheridan and investigative reporter Donal MacIntyre.

“As a filmmaker, many stories fascinate me, but this story compels me,” Sheridan said. “In 1996, Sophie—a young mother, a wife, a film producer and a daughter—died just yards from her holiday home in West Cork. To this day, the case remains unsolved in Ireland, while the key suspect has been found guilty in France. As a guest of the nation, Sophie’s murder continues to carry implications for the meaning of justice in Ireland and in France. Two legal systems and two investigations by the French and the Irish found two very different conclusions. I wanted to understand how that could happen, to search for justice and to help uncover the truth.”

“Jim Sheridan demonstrates his extraordinary storytelling ability in Murder at the Cottage as he shares his extensive and personal quest to find answers about a brutal act in the normally peaceful countryside of his native Ireland,” said Ryan Chanatry, general manager of Topic. “The docuseries is the perfect example of the haunting, suspenseful stories that subscribers expect from Topic, and we are proud to share this critically acclaimed, truly unique project with them.”