BBC First: upcoming highlights

BBC First has announced a number of its upcoming premium dramas including the anticipated Nazi drama SS-GB, the very dark Taboo and local drama Top of the Lake: China Girl with Elisabeth Moss, Gwendoline Christie and Nicole Kidman.

Call the Midwife will return with a Christmas special ahead of a new season. Also coming are more of Death in Paradise and Maigret starring Rowan Atkinson. Later this month The Fall returns and Victoria debuts.

Top of the Lake Series 2
The local BBC First/Foxtel co-production Top of the Lake, which will screen in 2017. A first look image of Elizabeth Moss who is reprising her Golden Globe winning role of Detective Robin Griffin is issued today. The crime mystery begins four years on from the explosive ending of series one. When the unidentified body of an Asian girl wages up on Bondi Beach the case seems hopeless – until Robin Griffen discovers that ‘China Girl’ didn’t die alone.

The Missing – series 2
Tcheky Karyo reprises his role as detective Julien Baptiste while Keeley Hawes and David Morrissey play Gemma and Sam, whose daughter Alice went missing in 2003. Eleven years later she reappears sending shockwaves through the small community and throwing Alice’s parents into turmoil. Baptiste races across Europe to pursue a case he never let die. Once again the action unfolds across two different timelines and explores what happens when the missing child you’ve been longing to return actually comes back.

BBC First will also screen two brand new series:

SS-GB (pictured, top)
Starring Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth, SS-GB is an adaptation of Len Deighton’s iconic novel by the BAFTA-Award-winning writing team behind SPECTRE, Skyfall and Casino Royale. Set in an alternate history where the Germans won the Battle of Britain in the Second World War, SS-GB is an explosive espionage thriller that asks what would you do if faced with the choice of collaboration or joining a brutal resistance?

Taboo
Tom Hardy stars in an eight-part series about an adventurer who returns to Britain from Africa along with fourteen stolen diamonds to seek vengeance after the death of his father. Created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), Taboo is based on a story by Tom Hardy and his father Chips Hardy and is produced by Ridley Scott.

Meanwhile CBeebies has new episodes series of global hits Hey Duggee and Go Jetters in coming months and BBC Knowledge has the STV premiere of Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie.