Show of the week: Intruders

BBC America’s latest original drama follows a similar theme to previous efforts – British and North American sensibilities meshed together with production expertise and stylings from both sides of the Atlantic.

Intruders tells the story of a former LAPD officer who becomes involved with a secret society devoted to chasing immortality by taking control of others’ bodies. The officer (British actor John Simm), a man with a dark, violent past, is thrown into turmoil when his wife mysteriously disappears.

Writer Glen Morgan (The X Files) says the BBC Two coproduction closely follows the source material, author Michael Marshall Smith’s novel of the same name. “The book really mashed up several genres – a Raymond Chandler ‘my wife is missing’ story and an Omen-type story, for example. I really drew on that, with multiple stories converging on one plot.”

Morgan also looked to Alan J. Pakula-directed movies from the 20th Century such as Parallax View and All the King’s Men and Francis Ford Coppolla’s The Conversation, which he describes as having “the same paranoid tone” as his series.

The initial commission is for eight episodes, and season one will have a closed ending. However, Morgan has a plan to run the show for up to five seasons, with an ending at that point already conceived.

Meanwhile, thanks to having LA-based BBC Worldwide Productions on producing duties, the show has plenty of “European sensibilities” along with Morgan’s trademark horror genre influences, which he honed while a writer on Chris Carter’s science-fiction series The X Files.

The show: Intruders
The producer: BBC Worldwide Productions
The distributor: BBC Worldwide
The broadcasters: BBC America (US), BBC Two (UK)
The concept: Dark drama involving an immortality-chasing cult and a cop with a violent past