Nick Hornby to Adapt Culture-Clash Comedy ‘Love, Nina’ for BBC
LONDON — Author-screenwriter Nick Hornby, who was Oscar nominated for “An Education” and picked up a Writers Guild of America nomination for Reese Witherspoon-starrer “Wild,” is to write his first television drama, culture-clash comedy “Love, Nina.”
The BBC has commissioned Hornby to pen the five-part drama series, adapted from Nina Stibbe’s nonfiction book. See-Saw Films, whose credits include “The King’s Speech” and “Top of the Lake,” is producing the series.
The book tells the true story of Stibbe, who moved when she was 19 years old from the English provinces to London to work as a nanny for Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books. It is told through letters sent by Stibbe to her sister over a five-year period.
Hornby said: “We want to make a series that is as charming, funny and delightful as Nina Stibbe’s glorious book.”
“Love, Nina” is executive produced by Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Jamie Laurenson for See-Saw Films, and Lucy Richer, drama commissioning editor at the BBC.
Laurenson said: “Nick has an unrivalled ability to illuminate the moving and the hilarious in the everyday.”
The BBC has also commissioned author-screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, best known for the Alex Rider novels, to pen “New Blood,” a seven-part crime thriller, to be produced by Eleventh Hour Films.
Series centers on junior investigators Stefan and Rash, who work for two different law enforcement divisions, and are brought together by two seemingly unrelated cases. They come up against the rich and the powerful who hide behind legitimate facades and are guarded by lawyers.
Horowitz, whose screen credits include TV dramas like “Midsomer Murders” and “Agatha Christie: Poirot,” recently penned Peter Jackson’s “The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun,” whose producers include Jackson and Steven Spielberg.
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