{"id":572828,"date":"2026-05-08T11:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/572828\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:12:14","slug":"ben-miles-jimmy-akingbola-more-join-itv-zdf-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/572828\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Miles, Jimmy Akingbola & More Join ITV & ZDF Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: ITV<\/a> and ZDF<\/a>\u2018s space mystery First Woman<\/a> has rounded out its main cast.<\/p>\n

\n\tBen Miles<\/a> (Andor, The Crown), Jimmy Akingbola<\/a> (Bel-Air, The Tower), Kathryn Gallagher<\/a> (Woman of the Hour, You), Christian Ochoa Lavernia<\/a> (In the Grey, Neuromancer), Shazad Latif<\/a> (Wuthering Heights, Nautilus) and Fra Fee<\/a> (Unchosen, Lost Boys and Fairies) have been joined the drama series.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey\u2019ll join leads Andrea Riseborough and Ashley Walters<\/a>, and Jennifer Elhe and Alex Hassell, who were announced<\/a> last week. Philip Martin is the director.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series, from Lydia Yeoman and George Oakes, follows Claire Reith (Riseborough), a biologist in a groundbreaking research project and the first woman to set foot on the moon, who disappears, throwing suspicion on her fellow astronauts and a rival Chinese base. Thousands of miles away on Earth, her husband, Ben (Walters), searches for the truth. The action switches between Mission Control and the lunar surface as the race against time builds.<\/p>\n

\n\tAkingbola plays astronaut Dr Henry Evans, in charge of the nuclear reactor that sustains life on the moon, while Fee plays astronaut Dr Declan McAllister, whose bullish demeanor puts him at loggerheads with Claire. Gallagher former NASA astronaut Lucy Miller, now working in Mission Control and Ochoa Lavernia plays Gabriel Ross, commander of the moon mission. Latif plays Inesh Vidhani, the billionaire who is behind the space programme and Miles plays mission director Peter Talbot, a former astronaut now running Mission Control.<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst Woman, which is being billed as cinematic in scale and ambition, was an ITV commission out of the UK. ITV Studios<\/a>-owned Mammoth Screen<\/a>,\u00a0Blade Runner 2099\u00a0firm Alcon Television Group<\/a> and\u00a0ZDF\u00a0in Germany are attached to co-produce the six-part lunar series, which will dart between space and Earth, blending sci-fi and thriller elements. Alcon Television Group and ITV Studios, with the the latter taking international sales rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scripts come from lead writer Yeoman, Oakes and Ben Schiffer and Julia Stannard is the producer. Mammoth Screen\u2019s founder and Chief Creative Officer, Damien Timmer, is executive producer alongside James Gandhi, Martin, Oakes and Yeoman.\u00a0Mammoth Screen\u2019s Creative Director,\u00a0Rebecca Keane,\u00a0oversaw development of the series.\u00a0Alcon\u2019s Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, Scott Parish, Diego Piasek and\u00a0Ben Roberts also serve as executive producers.<\/p>\n

\n\tFilming is underway in Northern Ireland. UNIT VFX is working with Mammoth Screen and Alcon delivering\u00a0creative visual effects, while Poli Productions creative exec Rob Carlisle is teaming with Martin and production designer Gillian Devenney to create the lunar vistas.\u00a0The lunar landscape and moonbase are being housed at Studio Ulster, the UK\u2019s largest virtual production studio.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe series will broadcast in the UK on ITV1 and Scotland\u2019s STV, and stream on ITVX and STV Player, with ITV Director of Drama Polly Hill overseeing production for the network. ZDF has German rights, with Yi Qiao the commissioning editor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: ITV and ZDF\u2018s space mystery First Woman has rounded out its main cast. Ben Miles (Andor, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[195974,195975,195976,96,188355,158723,347,11522,195977,195978,195979,195980,391,56,54,55,159068],"class_list":["post-572828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-alcon-television-group","tag-ben-miles","tag-christian-ochoa-lavernia","tag-entertainment","tag-first-woman","tag-fra-fee","tag-itv","tag-itv-studios","tag-jimmy-akingbola","tag-kathryn-gallagher","tag-mammoth-screen","tag-shazad-latif","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-zdf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}