BBC Plans Landmark Drama Series About Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s Arbitrary Detention In Iran
EXCLUSIVE: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s six-year-long ordeal at the hands of Iranian authorities gripped Britain — and now her story is to be told in a major BBC factual drama series.
Deadline can reveal that the British broadcaster is planning to adapt Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s upcoming book, A Yard of Sky: A Story of Love, Resistance and Hope, which she co-wrote with her husband Richard Ratcliffe, who campaigned tirelessly for her release from prison.
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The four-part drama will chronicle Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s experience, from the day the charity worker was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 on spying charges, to her release in March 2022. It will also portray Ratcliffe’s fight to free his wife, including him staging a hunger strike outside Britain’s Foreign Office.
The series will be produced by Dancing Ledge Productions, which has form in making BBC factual dramas after 2020’s The Salisbury Poisonings, which spotlighted the Novichok attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on British soil. The Fremantle-owned company also produces the BBC’s Martin Freeman series The Responder.
Deadline hears that production gets underway on the untitled Zaghari-Ratcliffe drama later this month, with filming taking place in the UK and Europe. It is not yet known who will play Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family, though casting is likely to be in its final stages.
The BBC would not comment on who is writing the series, which has been shrouded in secrecy as the corporation attempts to balance the sensitivities involved with doing the story justice. The show is editorially independent of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but she has signed off on the adaptation of her book and Dancing Ledge producers will consult her on issues of accuracy.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British dual citizen, was preparing to board a flight home from Tehran after visiting family when she was separated from her daughter and detained by local authorities. She was subjected to “intense interrogation” and solitary confinement during the early months of her detention, and went on to stage hunger strikes after losing appeals against her incarceration.
Her husband was a forceful and eloquent campaigner, advocating for her release as four British foreign secretaries, including Boris Johnson, failed to navigate geopolitical tensions with Iran. Ratcliffe’s protests culminated in a 21-day hunger strike that ended in November 2021. Five months later, Zaghari-Ratcliffe returned home, with her plight dominating the national news agenda.
In an interview with the BBC last month, she revealed that she had suffered with PTSD and depression since her release from prison. “Freedom is sweet, it’s amazing, but it’s not easy,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe told Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
A BBC spokesperson said: “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe’s extraordinary experiences captured everyone’s hearts; their journey is one of despair, courage and hope, spanning two countries and six years, and ultimately, it’s a story of how this family, who were forced apart by international events, were finally reunited.”
A Yard of Sky will be published by Penguin Random House’s Chatto & Windus imprint. The book’s blurb states: “When a man suddenly appeared and marched Nazanin away, they couldn’t know their family was about to be changed forever. That moment would test their love, confront five foreign secretaries and take an ordinary family behind the curtain of international hostage diplomacy and secret debts.”
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