Roy Grace dramas start filming in Brighton

Filming on the long-awaited Roy Grace TV adaptation begins this week in Brighton.

John Simm is starring at detective Roy Grace, who features in Peter James’s bestselling series of crime novels all set in and around the city.

Many of the fictional colleagues have now been cast – but the role of love interest Cleo Morey has yet to be filled.

ITV has commissioned two two-hour screenplays based on the first two stories in the popular Roy Grace series, Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead.

The scripts have been written by Endeavour creator, Russell Lewis. He said: “I’m thrilled and honoured to be involved in bringing Peter James’ brilliantly gripping series of Roy Grace novels to ITV.

“Each story is a fantastic, hair-raising, twisting, switch-back of a roller-coaster ride that grips the reader from first to last, and the opportunity to translate that best-selling magic to television is like all one’s Christmases and birthdays come at once.

“As his millions of fans and admirers are well aware, Peter’s meticulous research and eye for detail is the stuff of legend.

“His long established, close relationship with the police, taken together with a knowledge of Brighton and the south coast that is the sole preserve of the born and bred lends his stories an unimpeachable veracity of place and procedure.

“That John Simm will be breathing flesh to the bones of Roy Grace really is the cherry on a dark, and troublingly encrimsoned cake.”

Richie Campbell (Liar, Blue Story, Top Boy) is taking the role of DS Glenn Branson and Rakie Ayola (Noughts + Crosses, Shetland, No Offence) plays ACC Vosper.

Laura Elphinstone (Game of Thrones, Chernobyl, Line of Duty) is DS Bella Moy, Amaka Okafor (The Split, Vera) plays DC Emma Jane Boutwood, and Brad Morrison (National Theatre Live; Twelfth Night) takes the role of DC Nicholl.

Rebecca Scrogs (Alex Rider, Flack, Scarborough) plays Branson’s wife Ari, Alexander Cobb (Doctors, Vera) plays Kevin Spinella and they are also joined by Adrian Rawlings (Chernobyl, Girlfriends, Innocent), Natasha Joseph (Get Even, Doctors, Sex Education), Tom Weston-Jones (Warrior, The Terror, Dickensian), Matt Stokoe (Cursed, Jamestown, Bodyguard), Alisha Bailey (Save Me, Chewing Gum) and Maggie O’Neill (White Lines, The Split, Shameless).

The first film, Dead Simple, opens with Grace running enquiries into long forgotten cold cases with little or no prospect of success. He’s fixated by the disappearance of his beloved wife, Sandy, which haunts his thoughts. His unorthodox police methods have come under scrutiny once again and Grace is walking a career tightrope and risks being moved from the job he loves most.

With so much at stake, his colleague Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson knows he has more to give and asks him for help with a case. When a stag night prank appears to go wrong and the groom goes missing, Branson calls upon Grace to unravel events that led to the mysterious disappearance three days before his wedding to his beautiful fiancé.

A successful property developer with everything to live for, there is no trace of the missing groom. Is this a case of stag night shenanigans gone badly awry? Or is this something more sinister?

With nothing but instinct, a lingering suspicion and his obsessive nature, Grace doggedly pursues the groom’s disappearance and becomes uneasily close to the bride to be.