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The BBC has renewed hit drama “Peaky Blinders” for two more seasons.
The 1920s-set gangster series, from creator and writer Steven Knight, will return for seasons four and five, with Cillian Murphy leading the cast.
Also renewed is Peter Bowker’s family drama “The A Word”, which will get a second season.
Written by Peter Bowker, the show centres on Joe, a boy with autism.
The BBC also ordered three new shows: “Us”, “Babs” and “The Boy with the Top Knot”:
“Us” is an adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel to be adapted by Nick Payne.
The bestselling book tells the story of Douglas and Connie Petersen, a couple whose marriage is on the rocks. When they go on a family grand tour of European cities, Douglas sees it as a last bid to win back the love of his wife, and repair his troubled relationship with his son.
Set in the 1990s and written by Tony Jordan, “Babs” will tell the heart-warming story of Barbara Windsor, the Cockney kid with a dazzling smile and talent to match. Preparing to perform in the theatre that evening, Babs takes us on a journey of all the people and events that have shaped her career: her lonely childhood and complicated relationship with her father, her doomed marriage to Ronnie Knight, capturing the attention of Joan Littlewood and becoming the blonde bombshell in the Carry On films. Babs, ever the consummate professional, never lets her fans down whatever her personal anguish, and steps on the stage to rapturous applause.
Finally, “The Boy With The Topknot” is based on journalist Sathnam Sanghera’s memoirs.
Born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands, the book is his account of his childhood in 1980s Wolverhampton, and facing up to a bunch of painful family secrets and truths in his twenties – not least that his father and sister had suffered from schizophrenia – and that he was going to defy expectations of an arranged marriage.
