The Crown’s Olivia Colman is all set to take the lead role in Sky and HBO’s darkly comic crime drama Landscapers.
The actress, who won an Oscar for her role as Queen Anne in The Favourite, will play a woman accused of murder in the drama, which is based on the vicious 1998 double murder of Patricia and William Wycherley.
And in order to keep it in the family, Colman’s husband Ed Sinclair has penned the screenplay for the series.
“I love Ed’s scripts” said Colman about her husband’s involvement in the series, “which is just as well as he cooks many of my meals. It’s quite rare to be desperate to play a part on the first reading of a script, but that was the case here,” the actress added.
Here’s our guide to everything you need to know about Landscapers:
What’s Landscapers about?
Landscapers tells the story of Susan and Christopher Edwards, the ‘mild mannered’ Mansfield couple who were convicted in 2014 of the murders of Susan’s parents, Patricia, and William Wycherley.
The elderly couple had vanished into thin air in 1998 with their neighbours believing that the couple had simply gone travelling and never returned.
The truth was much darker, however. The pair had in fact been shot dead by their daughter Susan and her husband Christopher, before being buried in the garden of their Mansfield home.
Despite the case going unsolved for the next 16 years, justice was finally done in 2014 after Susan and Christopher Edwards emailed police with a confession from France.
The couple had fled to the country in 2012 fearing that the authorities were closing in. these fears could only have intensified after the bodies of the two elderly victims were found under the garden of the house in Mansfield. A few months later and the bodies were identified as being the missing couple.
Oddly, the murderers were about to fall into the police’s lap when Christopher Edwards sent the investigating team an email informing them that he and his wife would be surrendering themselves to the UK Border Force Authorities at the Eurostar terminal at Lille Europe station.
“We would prefer to do this” he said, “since my wife is already sufficiently frightened.”
By then, the Edwards’ had siphoned off the staggering sum of £245,000 pounds from the Wycherley’s bank account, which they mainly spent on Hollywood souvenirs, including several autographed photos of Gary Cooper.
Shortly after handing themselves in, the couple were found guilty by a jury at Nottingham Crown Court and sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.
The producers of Landscapers have said that the series is based on extensive research into the crime, including including hours of interviews and direct access with the accused, who have always maintained their innocence.
Who is in the cast of Landscapers?
Colman will portray Susan Edwards in Landscapers with ‘Fargo’ star David Thewlis playing her other half, Christopher.
Kate O’Flynn, Samuel Anderson, Karl Johnson, Dipa Ola and Daniel Rigby will also appear in the eagerly awaited HBO drama.
Who is behind the camera on the show?
The series will be directed by the Academy Award winning director Alexander Payne (The Descendants) with American TV network HBO, arts company Sister and Olivia Colman & Ed Sinclair’s production company South of the River sharing production chores.
When can we see Landscapers on the TV?
There is no official date for the series yet but Landscapers is expected to premiere on the small screen in early 2021.
More information about the series can be found here.
For information on other forthcoming TV shows, please click here.
