Florence Pugh Will Star in The Little Drummer Girl

Riding on the back of the huge success of The Night Manager, the BBC have announced that they’ll be bringing another of John le Carré’s spy thrillers to the small screen with a six-part adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl.

Production is only set to start in January, which means that we could have to wait over a year until we get to see the fruits of this exciting project which stars Florence Pugh — who made a name for herself earlier this year for her outstanding turn in Lady Macbeth — as the lead.

The BBC have pulled off something of a coup for this new series which will see Korean film director Park Chan-wook make his first foray into TV.

The auteur, whose works, including this year’s standout foreign language film, The Handmaiden, are known for their sumptuous visuals and labyrinthine plots, seems like a perfect choice to helm one of le Carré’s intricate and winding narratives. But it’ll be interesting to see the director will be willing reign in his trademark penchant for ultra-violence for a primetime TV audience.

Park is clearly already raring to start work on the series — in a statement to the BBC he said: "of le Carré’s many masterpieces, the one I love ahead of any other is The Little Drummer Girl. At the core of this story is an extremely painful, but thrilling, romance”.

The Little Drummer Girl is another rich tale filled with espionage, global conspiracies and personal dramas. Set in 1970s, it follows an actress, Charlie (Pugh), who becomes embroiled in a plot by Israeli intelligence to take down a Palestinian terrorist.

Le Carré’s 1983 work is often cited as one of the greatest spy novel ever written, so we’re expecting big, big things from this drama when it does eventually make it on air.