Epix picks up UK drama ‘SAS: Rogue Heroes’ from ‘Peaky Blinders’ scribe Steven Knight

MGM-owned US network Epix has acquired six-part wartime drama SAS: Rogue Heroes, in the first international deal for the show from distributor Banijay Rights.

Produced by Banijay UK label Kudos and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s indie Nebulastar for UK pubcaster the BBC, the series is a dramatised account of how British special forces unit, the SAS, was formed under extraordinary circumstances during the Second World War. It will debut on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK.

Based on Ben Macintyre’s book of the same name, the series centers on David Stirling, an eccentric young officer, who is hospitalised after a training exercise gone wrong.

Convinced that traditional commando units don’t work, Stirling creates a radical plan that flies in the face of all accepted rules of modern warfare. He fights for permission to recruit the toughest, boldest, and brightest soldiers for a small undercover unit that will create mayhem behind enemy lines.

SAS: Rogue Heroes is developed for television and written by Knight and will be directed by Tom Shankland (The Serpent), with Stephen Smallwood (The Serpent) as producer. The series is executive produced by Karen Wilson, Martin Haines and Emma Kingsman-Lloyd for Kudos, and Tommy Bulfin for the BBC.

Connor Swindells will play David Stirling, alongside Jack O’Connell, Alfie Allen, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sofia Boutella and Dominic West.

“Steven Knight and Kudos have created a gripping historical drama that complements Epix’s lineup of elevated, cinematic  storytelling,” said Michael Wright, president of Epix & MGM Scripted Television. “We’re delighted to be teaming up with Banijay Rights to give this series an exclusive home on Epix for the American audience.”

Earlier this year, TBI exclusively revealed how Sharon Stirling, the wife of David Stirling’s nephew, Archie Stirling, Laird of Keir, had acquired the screen rights to Antonia Fraser’s biography, The Case Of The Married Woman, about 19^th-century social reformer Caroline Norton – who was also part of the Stirling family tree.