Filming begins on Stephen Merchant drama
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Filming is underway on writer/director Stephen Merchant’s The Offenders, for Amazon Prime and BBC One.
Merchant’s company Four Eyes is making the drama with Big Talk Productions; filming is based in Bristol, where the drama is set.
Shooting on the 6 x 60 is due to run for around four months.
The Offenders (w/t) follows seven strangers from different backgrounds who come together as part of their Community Payback sentence.
Their back stories are gradually uncovered and, as they forge unlikely new friendships, they are tested when they come up against Bristol’s most dangerous criminal gang.
The BBC/Amazon Studios co-production is created by Merchant and Elgin James; the former will also be the lead director on the show.
Kenton Allen, Luke Alkin and Matthew Justice exec produce alongside Merchant; Nickie Sault produces.
At the time of the greenlight news, Merchant said: "The Offenders’ mix of light and shade, dark and comic, middle-class angst with inner-city grit, reflects the unlikely partnership of me and Elgin. I grew up in suburbia, whereas Elgin spent his early life building a national street gang until a police investigation landed him in prison.
Picture: BBC.
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