‘Peaky Blinders’ outfit Caryn Mandabach Productions to adapt PD James’ Cordelia Gray novels

Eve Hedderwick Turner (Source: Caryn Mandabach Productions)

Peaky Blinders outfit Caryn Mandabach Productions (CMP) has optioned the TV rights to the two PD James novels featuring private detective Cordelia Gray.

As part of a deal with the PD James estate, CMP will adapt An Unsuitable Job For A Woman and The Skull Beneath The Skin and has agreed the potential to develop further Cordelia Gray stories beyond the two existing novels.

Eve Hedderwick Turner, creator of Channel 5 drama Anne Boleyn, will develop the two novels as a returning drama series, set in the present day.

First published in 1972, An Unsuitable Job For A Woman introduced the character of Cordelia Gray, a private detective in London who inherits the agency following the suicide of her boss. She is hired to investigate the death of a young university student who is found hanged in mysterious circumstances. As she explores the hidden secrets of the young man’s family, Gray realises that this was not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister.

The detective’s story was continued in the 1982 novel The Skull Beneath The Skin, published the same year as as a film adaptation of the first book. An Unsuitable Job For A Woman was again adapted as a TV series for ITV in 1997, running for two seasons between 1997 and 2001 and starring Helen Baxendale as Cordelia Gray.

CMP head of development Alexandra Arlango and Hedderwick Turner will executive produce along with CMP chief exec Caryn Mandabach, and creative director, Jamie Glazebrook.

Hedderwick Turner commented: “Twenty-two year old Cordelia Gray is not your traditional private detective. Fierce and instinctive, she really cares about justice – even if she must resort to slightly questionable methods to achieve it.”