BBC America, Carnival Films – the Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning producers of Downton Abbey – and BBC Two announced today that production will begin this fall on The Last Kingdom, a new historical 8 x 60 drama series.BAFTA nominated and RTS award-winning writer Stephen Butchard, (Good Cop, Five Daughters, House of Saddam), will adapt Bernard Cornwell’s best-selling franchise "The Saxon Stories" for the screen. Cornwell is also known for his much-loved "Sharpe" novels that became the long-running TV series of the same name starring Sean Bean and aired on BBC America.
Set in the year 872, when many of the separate kingdoms of what we now know as England have fallen to the invading Vikings, the great kingdom of Wessex has been left standing alone and defiant under the command of King Alfred the Great.
Against this turbulent backdrop lives our hero, Uhtred. Born the son of a Saxon nobleman, he is orphaned by the Vikings and then kidnapped and raised as one of their own. Forced to choose between the country of his birth and the people of his upbringing, his loyalties are ever tested. What is he - Saxon or Viking? On a quest to claim his birthright, Uhtred must tread a dangerous path between both sides if he is to play his part in the birth of a new nation and, ultimately, seek to recapture his ancestral lands.
