Muriel’s Wedding star Toni Collette will play a therapist trying to keep the spark alive in her marriage in a new BBC series about a multi-generational family penned by Constellations playwright Nick Payne, it has been announced.
Wanderlust will be the first television series written by Payne and will star The Halcyon’s Steven Mackintosh, Fresh Meat actress Zawe Ashton and Line Of Duty’s Royce Pierreson.
The six-part drama, which is a co-production with Netflix, will premiere in the UK on BBC One and on the streaming service internationally.
Directed by Luke Snellin and made by Drama Republic, the company behind Doctor Foster and King Charles III, the show will look at how people build and maintain happy relationships and ask whether lifelong monogamy is possible – or even desirable.
Collette will play Joy Richards, whose relationship with her husband is reassessed after a cycling accident.
She said: “I am honoured and thrilled to work with Nick Payne’s wonderful words on Wanderlust.
“It is an authentic and revolutionary story about relationships, sex, love and all the things we really care about. I could not be more excited.”
Payne addd: “I’m over the moon to be working with Drama Republic, the BBC and Netflix. And the cast – what a galaxy of talent. Toni Collette is an astronomically adept performer, and someone I’ve long admired.”
Filming has begun in Manchester and a first-look image from the set shows Collette smiling in the front seat of a car with co-star William Ash.
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