Finally: Crime Drama DCI Banks Officially Renewed for a Third Series
The crime drama will return for a new six-part series starring Stephen Tompkinson, Andrea Lowe and Caroline Catz. Series 3 will based on three of Peter Robinson’s novels, and two episodes will be devoted to each of the three stories entitled Wednesday’s Child, Piece of My Heart and Bad Boy.
“DCI Banks has become a firm favorite amongst the ITV Drama audience and I’m very pleased we have commissioned a third series,” said ITV’s Director of Drama Steve November. “The new stories will pose searching questions for Banks as ultimately he’s forced to take extreme action to keep his team together.”
Per the official press release the new series will see DS Annie Cabbott return from maternity leave, explore whether a romantic relationship between Annie and Banks can ever be a reality, and introduce Banks’ university dropout daughter Tracy. DI Helen Morton is also returning and she, Annie and Banks will have to sort out how to work together as a team.
A handful of details have also been released about the general storylines of the episodes themselves. The first story, Wednesday’s Child, which revolves around a strange and sinister child abduction undertaken by a man and a woman claiming to be social workers, will be written by lead writer Robert Murphy and Rob Williams. Murphy will also adapt Piece of My Heart, where the body of a journalist in a remote village connects Banks to a death in the 1980s revolving around the surviving members of a cult band. In the final story Bad Boy, which will be written and adapted by Cath Tregenna, a terrible chain of events is set in motion by the discovery of a loaded gun in a young girl’s bedroom, that ultimately puts Banks’ daughter in mortal danger. Dun dun dunnnn.
Filming is set to begin this August in Yorkshire with a rumored eye toward a UK transmission in early 2014. Hopefully, this means the crime drama will be available to PBS stations in America shortly thereafter and we won’t have to wait very long to see Series 3 for ourselves.
Thoughts? Are you excited for more DCI Banks? What would you like to see in Series 3?
