While isolation has undoubtedly given us unprecedented amounts of time to catch up on this year’s can’t miss series – from Elle Fanning’s The Great to Sally Rooney’s epic Normal People and Michaela Coel’s gripping I May Destroy You. But, if you’re like us and the list is beginning to dwindle and you’re after your next great binge, look no further than new murder-mystery, The Luminaries.
The six-part BBC adaptation, based on Eleanor Catton’s 2013 Man Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, is being hailed as “an intricately woven, suspenseful tale of love, murder, magic, and revenge”.
The story is an “epic story of love, murder and revenge, as men and women travelled across the world to make their fortunes. It is a 19th-century tale of adventure and mystery, set on the Wild West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the boom years of the 1860s gold rush,” according to its official synopsis.
“The story follows defiant young adventurer Anna Wetherell, who has sailed from Britain to New Zealand to begin a new life,” it adds. “There she meets the radiant Emery Staines, an encounter that triggers a strange kind of magic that neither can explain. As they fall in love, driven together and apart by fateful coincidence, these star-crossed lovers begin to wonder: do we make our fortunes, or do our fortunes make us?”
Eva Green, of Casino Royale and Penny Dreadful, stars as brothel madam Lydia Wells, and Eve Hewson stars as Anna Wetherell. Himesh Patel will depict Emery Staines, The Cry’s Ewen Leslie has been cast as Crosbie Wells, and New Zealand actor Marton Csokas will play Francis Carver.
Watch the trailer below:
The series will premiere on June 21.
