BritBox Announces New Series 'Outrageous' Starring 'Bridgerton's Bessie Carter

Move over Kardashians; there’s a new dynasty of celebrity sisters headed to our screens — except they were born over a century ago. Enter the Mitford sisters, the subjects of a forthcoming BritBox period drama, Outrageous, which began filming today around Buckinghamshire. The six Mitford sisters, born between 1904 and 1920, captured the imagination of the British public like 20th-century Kardashians, famous for being famous. They were confident, opinionated, politically connected, and eminently eccentric.

They also managed to capture the imagination of writer and producer Sarah Williams, who has adapted the Mitford sisters’ story from Mary Lovell's biography of the family, The Mitford Girls. This isn’t Williams’s first crack at adapting from page to screen. She was the writer behind the BBC’s period drama The Long Song, based on a novel of the same name, which came over to the US via Masterpiece in 2021. Though each sister’s story is more outlandish than the last, Outrageous will center on the eldest Mitford sister, Nancy Mitford, played by Bessie Carter (Bridgerton). Nancy Mitford, a socialist with a sharp sense of humor, was a mildly successful author on the fringes of the Bright Young Things social scene. One of her novels, Love In A Cold Climate, was even adapted for the screen by the BBC in 2001 (and streams on BritBox!).

Carter’s Nancy Mitford will be joined by a cast that includes Joanna Vanderham (Crime) as Diana Mitford, Shannon Watson (Say Nothing) as Unity Mitford, Zoe Brough (Casualty) as Jessica Mitford, Orla Hill (Stonehouse) as Deborah Mitford and Isobel Jesper Jones (The Serpent Queen) as Pamela Mitford. Their brother Tom will be played by Toby Regbo (Belgravia: The Next Chapter), with Anna Chancellor (The Split) and James Purefoy (The Veil) as their oddball parents Muv and Farve.