New season of Grace to start filming this summer

New episodes of crime drama Grace will begin filming in Brighton and Hove in the late summer.

ITV announced this morning that three new feature-length episodes, covering Peter James’s novels Not Dead Enough, Dead Man’s Footsteps and Dead Tomorrow, will be made.

The first two episodes of the first season, based on Dead Simple, aired last month and were watched by 8.8 million people.

An air date for the third and fourth episodes, based on Looking Good Dead, has yet to be set.

Writer Russell Lewis said: “After the overwhelmingly positive audience response to the seaside noir of Dead Simple, (tabloid trauma tales notwithstanding!) and Looking Good Dead cued up ready to go, all at Team Roy Grace are delighted to have been given the opportunity by ITV to return to Brighton (and Hove, actually!) to continue Roy’s story with a new series of films based on Peter James best-selling novels.

“We’ll be shooting out of our Brighton HQ and all along and around the south coast from late summer through to very late autumn, so it’s quite possible that like some macabre Radio Fab Roadshow, our caravanserai of coroner’s van, SOCO unit, Mobile Incident Room may well be coming to a street near you!

“As the late, great Shaw Taylor used to ask viewers on Police 5… ‘Keep ‘em peeled!’”

John Simm will return as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, and screenwriter Russell Lewis will again lead the adaptation.

The series co-stars Richie Campbell as DS Glenn Branson and Rakie Ayola as ACC Vosper. Casting of pathologist and Grace’s love interest Cleo Morey has yet to be announced.

Cleo appears in all the Roy Grace novels, but does not feature in the first season of the television adaptation and has not yet been cast for the second.

ITV’s Head of Drama Polly Hill said: “We are delighted to be adapting more of Peter James’ wonderful novels. John Simm has brilliantly brought the much-loved Detective Superintendent Roy Grace to screen and there are many more cases for the audiences to enjoy.”

Executive producers are Andrew O’Connor and Paul Sandler for Second Act Productions, Patrick Schweitzer for Tall Story Pictures, Michael Vine for Vaudeville Productions, Russell Lewis and Peter James.