BBC Hitches Wagon To Hitchcock Craze, Again

With Alfred Hitchcock hot right now, the BBC is doubling up on the action. It’s already co-producing The Girl with HBO, a look at the director’s obsessive relationship with The Birds star Tippi Hedren. Now, it’s producing a new take on The Lady Vanishes with a British cast that includesUpstairs Downstairs star Keeley Hawes,Spooks’ Gemma Jones and The Hour’s Julian Rhind-Tutt. The 90-minute psychological thriller is penned by Fiona Seres and is set to air at Christmas. Seres adapted the source novel The Wheel Spins, which Hitchcock filmed as The Lady Vanishes in 1938. Set in 1931, the story centers on Iris, a young socialite on vacation who leaves her friends to travel alone. But after fainting at the train station, she awakens in a dreamlike state where a woman who comforts her then vanishes. Tuppence Middleton (Spies Of Warsaw, Love Punch) and Tom Hughes (Cemetery Junction, Page Eight) lead the cast. The film is produced by BBC Drama Productions and Ann Tricklebank. Diarmuid Lawrence (Little Dorrit) is directing. Hitchcock’sVertigo recently dislodged Citizen Kane as BFI Sight & Sound’s greatest movie of all time. In addition to The Girl with Sienna Miller and Toby Jones, another project based on the director’s life is Fox Searchlight’s Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson.