EXCLUSIVE: Steven Moffat has found his Prime Minister.
Black Mirror and Trying star Rafe Spall has taken on the coveted role in Channel 4’s upcoming Number 10 about the UK’s most famous residency, 10 Downing Street. He will be joined in the comedy drama by Katherine Kelly (In Flight), who will play his Chief of Staff, and Jenna Coleman (The Sandman), who plays her deputy.
Spall is playing a fictional Prime Minister and is not recreating the house’s current occupant, Keir Starmer. Rather than being based on a specific leader, the show instead comes from Sherlock co-creator Moffat’s fascination with centers of power. Logline reads: “There’s a Prime Minister in the attic, a coffee bar in the basement, and a wallpapered labyrinth of romance, crisis and heartbreak in-between. Set in the only terrace house in history with mice and a nuclear deterrent, it’s the only knock-through in the world where a hangover can start a war. The government will be fictional and unspecific, but the problems will be real. We’ll never know which party is in power, because once the whole world hits the fan it barely matters.”
“Number 10 is a sensational piece of writing, equal to its peerless author, Steven Moffat,” said Spall. “I’m delighted to be playing the Prime Minister, in a funny, real and thrilling piece of TV.”
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Spall has just come off the back of Apple TV’s Smoke opposite Taron Egerton and is the lead in long-running Apple comedy Trying. Other credits include Black Mirror, The English and Sky’s upcoming Under Salt Marsh.
Number 10 comes from Sue Vertue’s Hartswood Films and represents the first time Moffat has worked with Channel 4. Having show-ran Doctor Who and co-created Sherlock, Moffat said “for me it’s all about famous doors.” “The doors to the TARDIS, the door to 221B Baker Street, and now the most famous door in the world – Number 10. I’ve been wanting to write about the mad house that runs the madhouse for years, and I’ve never had so much fun doing the research. Other nations are ruled from mighty palaces. Britain is run from a little brick street with a big black door,” he added.
Joining Spall, Kelly and Coleman are Akshay Khanna (Murderbot, Critical Incident), Abigail Lawrie (No Escape, The Casual Vacancy), Laura Haddock (What It Feels Like For A Girl, Downton Abbey: A New Era), Jing Lusi (Red Eye, Crazy Rich Asians), Pierro Niel-Mee (Andor, Slow Horses), Rick Warden (Happy Valley, The Sixth Commandment), Joe Wilkinson (Afterlife, The Cookfields), Robyn Cara (Trying, Rainmaker), Richard Rankin (Rebus, Outlander), Rhiannon Clements (The Power of Parker, Vera), Patrick Baladi (The Office, Line of Duty), Shaun Prendergast (Wicked, Industry), Harry Baxendale (The Radleys, Shadow and Bone), Alex Macqueen (The Feud, Seven Dials Mystery), Sid Sagar (The Batman, Slow Horses), Sam Alexander (The Jury; Murder Trial, Sister Boniface Mysteries) and Emer Kenny (Karen Pirie, The Curse).
Commissioned for Channel 4 by Gwawr Lloyd, Acting Head of Channel 4 drama, the executive producers for Hartswood Films are Moffat and Vertue with Lawrence Till (The Devil’s Hour, The Young Offenders) as producer. Rachel Stone will be the co- producer. The director will be Ben Palmer (Douglas Is Cancelled, The Inbetweeners). Number 10 is produced in association with and will be distributed by ITV Studios.