THE MINISTRY OF TIME: LEAD CASTING ANNOUNCED FOR BBC DRAMA ADAPTATION OF KALAINE BRADLEY NOVEL

The BBC has announced casting for The Ministry of Time from A24, as filming begins in and around London. The series will star Aoife Hinds (Normal People, Dune: Prophecy) as Sophy and Billy Howle (The Perfect Couple, Under the Banner of Heaven) as Commander Graham Gore.

The Ministry of Time is based on Kaliane Bradley’s bestselling debut novel of the same name, adapted by Alice Birch (Normal People, The End We Start From, Dead Ringers), with Aneil Karia (Hamlet, The Gold, Surge) serving as the lead director. The six-part series will be 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 achieves a hard-fought promotion in the civil service, only to learn that her role is to help a time traveller acclimatise to the modern world as part of a top-secret Ministry programme.

Commander Graham Gore is a Victorian polar explorer and one of several ‘expats’ from history who are now part of the Ministry’s extraordinary experiment.

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.”

Further details and casting for Ministry of Time will be announced in due course.