Production begins on new police drama

Ashley Walters (Top Boy) is to lead the cast of new BBC One comedy drama Cuffs, as filming begins.

The cast also includes Peter Sullivan (The Borgias), Amanda Abbington (Mr Selfridge), Shaun Dooley (Exile), Paul Ready (Utopia), Eleanor Matsuura (Utopia), Alex Carter (Hollyoaks) and newcomer Jacob Ifan in his first leading television role.

Written by Julie Gearey (Prisoners’ Wives, Secret Diary of a Call Girl) and produced by Tiger Aspect Productions, Cuffs is a character-led drama as well as a police procedural full of humour and humanity.

From a booby trapped cannabis farm in a suburban semi to an elderly farmer’s wife with a shotgun, the stories are surprising and exciting. There will be more absurd altercations – such as a middle-class dog-napping or fisticuffs between pensioners – as well as the daily grind of speeding drivers, city-centre shoplifters and Saturday night drinkers.

Tiger Aspect’s Head of Drama Will Gould said -“We are thrilled to start filming Cuffs today. With her incredible wit, authenticity and balls-out storytelling – Julie Gearey is taking the cop show genre back to basics to create a fresh and bold series, bang up to date for 2015. And we can’t wait for her vision to be brought to life by director Anthony Philipson and our extraordinarily talented and diverse cast.”

Cuffs will shoot in Brighton, Shoreham-on-Sea and surrounding areas.