Shibden Hall opens doors of new BBC, HBO drama
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Editor
| 05 March 2017

BBC One and HBO have commissioned Shibden Hall, a brand new eight-part drama series produced by Lookout Point.


Set in West Yorkshire in 1832, Shibden Hall was created and written by Bafta-winning Sally Wainwright. It is the story of the landowner, Anne Lister. Returning after years of exotic travel and social climbing, Lister determines to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home in Yorkshire by marrying well and reopening her coal mines. However, Lister lived her life like a man and plans to marry a seriously wealthy woman.

Every part of the story is based in historical fact, recorded in the four million words of her diaries that contain the most intimate details of her life, once hidden in a secret code that is now broken.

“Anne Lister is a gift to a dramatist. She is one of the most exuberant, thrilling and brilliant women in British history, and I can’t wait to celebrate her,” Wainwright said. “Landowner, industrialist, traveller, mountaineer, scholar, would-be brain surgeon and prolific diarist, Anne returns from years of travel to her ancestral home, determined to restore it to its former glory, and determined to marry Ann Walker. It’s a beautifully rich, complicated, surprising love story. To bring Anne Lister to life on screen is the fulfilment of an ambition I’ve had for 20 years. Shibden Hall is a place I have known and loved since I was a child. I’m also delighted to be working with Faith Penhale again and the wonderful team at Lookout Point after our collaboration on To Walk Invisible, and of course thrilled to be working with the BBC and HBO.”

Piers Wenger, controller BBC Drama Commissioning, added: “The originality and ambition of the writing in Shibden Hall is Sally Wainwright at her boldest and best. In dramatising the life and loves of Anne Lister, Sally might just have found her most complex and uncompromising female character yet and I’m so proud that they will be making their home BBC One.”

The 8x60’ series will be directed by Sally Wainwright, produced by Lookout Point for BBC One, and co-produced with HBO. Executive producers are Sally Wainwright, Faith Penhale for Lookout Point and Piers Wenger for BBC One. The series will start filming in Yorkshire next year.