THE MINISTRY OF TIME: FURTHER CASTING ANNOUNCED FOR NEW BBC DRAMA ADAPTATION OF KALIANE BRADLE NOVEL
The BBC has announced cast joining Aoife Hinds and Billy Howle in The Ministry of Time.
The series is based on Kaliane Bradley’s bestselling debut novel of the same name and is adapted by Alice Birch (Normal People, The End We Start From, Dead Ringers). Aneil Karia (Top Boy, The Gold, Surge) is the lead director on the six-part series, which is produced by A24 (Beef, Such Brave Girls, Dreaming Whilst Black) for BBC iPlayer and BBC One.
The Ministry of Time is a newly established government department gathering ‘expats’ from across history in an experiment to test the viability of time-travel. Our heroine Sophy (Aoife Hinds) achieves a hard-fought promotion in the civil service, only to learn that her role as a ‘bridge’ is to help a time traveller acclimatise to the modern world as part of a top-secret Ministry programme.
Commander Graham Gore (Billy Howle) is a Victorian polar explorer and one of several ‘expats’ from history who are now part of the Ministry’s extraordinary experiment.
Hong Chau (The Whale, Wuthering Heights) is Adela, the Vice-Secretary of Expatriation, Adeel Akhtar (Down Cemetery Road, Sherwood) is Quentin Ackerly, Sophy’s ‘handler’ at The Ministry, and Tamara Lawrance (Get Millie Black, Mr Loverman) is Simellia, a ‘bridge’ alongside Sophy.
Starring as Commander Graham Gore’s fellow ‘expats’ are Emily Fairn (The Responder, House of Guinness) as Margaret Kemble, Josh Finan (Say Nothing, Waiting For The Out) as Captain Arthur Reginald-Smyth and Aisling Loftus (Sherwood, War & Peace) as Anne Spencer. Tawfeek Barhom (Cairo Conspiracy, The Way of the Wind) and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (120 Beats Per Minute, Persian Lessons) star as the elusive Brigadier and Salese.
Sophy’s parents, Peter and Channary, will be played by Ciarán Hinds (Belfast, Munich) and Hélène Patarot (Paris, Je T'aime, Whitetail).
Throughout the series, the professional friendship between Sophy and Graham develops into an intense forbidden romance that reveals the transporting power of love across centuries, just as the sinister nature of the Ministry’s true intentions increasingly puts them in danger.
The Ministry of Time author Kaliane Bradley says: “This is very exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes together. If I could travel back in time six years to tell past me what was going to happen with that polar explorer she'd just started writing about, I think she would have done some very Victorian swooning.”
Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama, says: “The Ministry of Time is a truly distinctive, genre-defying series with a beautiful central relationship and we are thrilled to have Aoife and Billy leading the cast. Kaliane Bradley has created two complex, compelling characters at the heart of this brilliant story, which has been beautifully adapted by Alice Birch. We can’t wait for BBC viewers to join us on this epic adventure.”
Filming is taking place in and around London.
