Sadie Jones’ award-winning novel The Outcast, is to become a two-part drama for BBC One.

It has been a long route to the big screen: Jones originally wrote it as a screenplay, which then became a best-selling novel, winning the First Novel gong at the 2008 Costa Awards.

The book segued back into a film script on the development slate at Blueprint Pictures, the shingle now responsible for bringing it to the BBC.

To be delivered as two feature length episodes, the drama is set in 50s Surrey and centres on 19 year-old Lewis Aldridge, the outcast to whom the title refers. Having just returned from prison, he has to deal with his mother’s drowning and his own alcoholism – laying bare a fractured life hidden beneath the world of the seemingly perfect English village.  

Shooting on The Outcast starts in late summer; details including producer, director, line producer and studio can be found on Production Intelligence. To order, click here.