Southcliffe

Award- winning writer Tony Grisoni (Red Riding, The Unloved) returns to Channel 4 with a new four-part drama, Southcliffe. Commissioned by Head of Drama Piers Wenger, Southcliffe tells the story of a fictional English market town devastated by a spate of shootings which take place over a single day. It explores tragedy, grief, responsibility and redemption seen through the eyes of a journalist returning to the small town of his childhood, and those closest to the victims of the tragedy.

Tony Grisoni says; "Southcliffe is a fictional market town inhabited by fictional characters, but with similarities to many actual people and places in Britain today. Invisible people, anonymous places. The inexplicable chain of events at the dark heart of this 4-part drama shatters Time and Space for Southcliffe's inhabitants. Violence and sudden bereavement confronts them with emotions they are unequipped to understand. Rather than analyse or moralise about our characters' actions, we share in them. Southcliffe is an anthem to ordinary people's ability to reinvent themselves in the face of ultimate darkness."

Piers Wenger adds; "Tony Grisoni's unique ability to convey the darkness and subtleties of human behaviour is in full evidence in these four brilliant scripts and I'm delighted that Warp Films and Tony have found a world class director like Sean Durkin to bring them to life."

Directed by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene - winner of Sundance Film Festival Directing Award) in his British television drama debut, produced by Derrin Schlesinger and executive produced by Peter Carlton for Warp Films and Sophie Gardiner for Channel 4.  Southcliffe will be filmed in the UK and broadcast on Channel 4 in 2013 (casting to be announced).