Monumental Television Options Rights to Amanda Craig's "The Three Graces"

 Monumental Television has optioned the rights to "The Three Graces," the latest book from British novelist and short-story writer, Amanda Craig. "Screen rights to 'The Three Graces' were highly sought after so I am delighted that we have been entrusted with bringing this brilliant story to television audiences," Alison Owen, Monumental co-founder, said. "We have been fans of Amanda’s work for a long time, and this feels like the perfect novel for us to collaborate on."

The option deal for "The Three Graces" was brokered by Anna Weguelin on behalf of Cathryn Summerhayes at the Curtis Brown Group. Development will start soon on an adaptation of the novel.

“I am thrilled that the great Alison Owen, whose female-centred dramas I have loved and admired ever since she filmed Tamara Drewe and Jane Eyre, and whose recent TV shows like Harlots and Ghosts I absolutely devoured, has chosen to adapt The Three Graces,'" Craig said. "With her knowledge of both the dark and the light sides of Tuscany, her sense of humour and intelligent sympathy for the human condition, she is the perfect person to bring my three 80+ year old heroines to a wider audience.” 

ITV Studios company's credits include three series of "Hulu’s Harlots," starring Samantha Morton, Lesley Manville, Jessica Brown Findlay and Liv Tyler, crime series "Murder in Provence," starring Roger Allam, Nancy Carroll and Keala Seale, recent family drama "Maryland" for ITV starring Suranne Jones, Eve Best and Stockard Channing and Mrs Sidhu Investigates, starring Meera Syal for Acorn, which also aired on UKTV's Drama channel.

In addition, series five of twice BAFTA-nominated Ghosts launched on BBC One in early October, while the US version is the highest rating comedy this year, with CBS renewing the show for a third season. Other upcoming productions include "The Marlow Murder Club" for UKTV’s Drama channel and PBS Masterpiece and "Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale" by Poldark writer Debbie Horsfield, a brand new series about modern day witches for AMC.

"The Three Graces" centers on three very different friends – Ruth, Diana and Marta – who have retired to the sunshine in Tuscany. When one of their neighbors, Enzo, shoots an illegal migrant from his bedroom one night, it triggers a series of events that embroil old and young, rich and poor, native and foreign. Over the course of two weeks, all those involved face difficult choices as they grapple not only with the present dangers but their own pasts, and realise that the realities of modern life make it harder and harder to believe that there is more that unites us than what keeps us apart.