TV: BBC Announces The Luminaries Release
The BBC has announced the release date for its much anticipated adaptation of The Luminaries. The show, which is based on the Man Booker prize-winning book of the same name, will run for six episodes starting on June 21.
The story is set on the West coast of New Zealand’s South Island in the middle of the 1860s gold rush. Anna Wetherell has travelled to New Zealand for a new life. On the journey there she meets and falls for Emery Staines but fortune-teller Lydia Wells has other ideas for Anna.
According to the BBC’s synopsis, “Deceived, swindled, and betrayed, Anna’s fortunes begin to fall. She is drawn into an elaborate plot of blackmail, involving opium, gold, shipwreck, fraud, and false identity, which ultimately finds her framed for murder and fighting for her life.
“But the bond between these star-crossed lovers is more than mere affinity. Anna and Emery are what is known as ‘astral twins’: they were born at the very same instant, and under the very same sky, which means that they share a single destiny.
“When Emery vanishes without a trace, leaving Anna without an alibi for a murder she did not commit, the noose of the plot begins to tighten around her. Faced with the impossible, she must ask: do we make our fortunes, or does fortune make us?”
Eve Hewson as Anna Wetherell in The Luminaries on BBC
The Luminaries author Eleanor Catton says it took her seven years to adapt the book for the screen.
“People often asked me on set, is it like what you imagined, when you wrote the book? The answer – very happily – was “not in the slightest”. So many different kinds of artistry and expertise go into the making of a television series, and every frame of the finished product shows the talent and efforts of hundreds of people in hundreds of ways. It’s far greater than anything any one person’s imagination could contain.”
Who stars in The Luminaries?
Eve Hewson (Robin Hood and Papillon) plays Anna alongside Himesh Patel (Eastenders and Motherland) as Emery Staines. French actress Eva Green (Casino Royale and Penny Dreadful) plays Lydia Wells.
Watch the official trailer:
The Luminaries will begin on BBC One on Sunday, June 21 at 9pm.
