Two Brothers Pictures is having a moment. Season 2 of its Prime Video drama The Assassin launches today, ITV drama Nightswimming has just been greenlit and Daisy Haggard’s Maya, with Bella Ramsey, will bow on Channel 4 early next year. Production just started on Danger Money for Prime Video, an action comedy series starring Ray Winstone. There’s also a new cop show, Code Zero from James Hall (Death in Paradise).
The two brothers who gave the prodco its name are Harry and Jack Williams. They, along with Chief Creative Officer Sarah Hammond and COO Michael Latif, reveal a new push into IP-based projects. A reboot of British TV classic Tenko is in the works, as well as a TV series take on the 2011 movie Chalet Girl. On the originals side there is Jack Green (WT) from Men Behaving Badly scribe Simon Nye and starring Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean). It will follow a disgraced celebrity vet who is starting over. Meanwhile, the two brothers are also penning their first movie.
Two Brothers
IP Moves: Tenko & Chalet Girl
Watch on Deadline
It’s no secret that in challenging times, commissioners want to de-risk projects by looking to established properties.
Two upcoming projects feed into this and demonstrate Two Brothers’ range. There is a new take on female WW2 internment camp drama Tenko and then a series version of young adult skewing movie Chalet Girl.
There were three seasons and a special of Tenko, starting in 1981 on the BBC and ABC in Australia. Two Brothers approached the show’s creator Lavinia Warner about creating a version for modern-day TV.
“We went to Lavinia Warner, who was the original producer and creator,” Hammond says. “She had a lot of relationships with the women, and the families of the women who were in the war camp, so she didn’t want to hand the reins over to just anyone, but she was really excited to work with us on it to bring it back.”
Anna Symon, whose credits include Mrs. Wilson and The Essex Serpent, is attached to write the new take on the period classic.
Chalet Girl the series, meanwhile, has Ride or Die scribe Tessa Coates on board. The original 2011 rom-com starred Felicity Jones and Ed Westwick. For Two Brothers this series is a move not just into IP, but also the red-hot young adult – or specifically the slightly broader ‘new adult’ – space.
“We haven’t done [new adult] before as a production company and thought what does that look like for Two Brothers?,” Hammond explains. “We’re working with the original producers [of Chalet Girl]. It’s got all the moving parts of a new adult story. It’s got the sex and the love and the exotic locations and it has a brilliant tone and a real voice.”
Another IP-based series in the work is a series adaptation of the British video game Atomfall. That sees Two Brothers team with indie studio Rebellion, coincidentally also run by siblings Chris and Jason Kingsley. Adapting the post-apocalyptic game is a new challenge for the Williams brothers. “We both play PlayStation and this is something completely different and a left turn for us, writing wise,” says Harry Williams.
“We’re about to sort of start going out with it… it’s a lot of fun to do, it’s very different, a big world and it’s very British as well,” adds his brother.
Unrelenting Focus On Writers
The company was borne out of years as struggling comedy writers before Two Brothers launched in 2014. If the slate is varied, the through line is an unrelenting focus on the scribe. “We said, ‘Can we start producing stuff and let other writers make shows and make them with a level of class and attention?’,” says Harry Williams of the decision to set up shop.
Jack Williams picks up the thread: “The only USP we had back then was that we knew what it’s like to be a writer and trying to get listened to by a production company. That’s what we could offer to newer writers. It was like, who else is out there who’s looking for a start and who can we work with and empower?”
The Missing, from the Williams brothers and Fleabag, from a then-up-and-comer called Phoebe Waller-Bridge, duly followed and were the shows that first put Two Brothers on the map. It went on to make series including Back To Life, Baptiste, Boat Story, Liar, Rellik and The Tourist. All3Media bought Two Brothers in 2017, meaning after the recent mega-merger, the company is now part of Banijay Entertainment.
BBC
The Assassin Season 2
The Williams brothers wrote the latest six episodes of The Assassin in just two months. Deadline sat down with them days ahead of the launch of Season 2 and requested a spoiler-free tease of what to expect.
“It’s roughly a year later and something’s happened between the events of Season 1 and this season that has reset the relationship between Edward (Freddie Highmore) and Julie (Keeley Hawes); there is a new mystery between them, and a reason why that animosity and sort of uncertainty has reemerged,” says Jack Williams. “The big and interesting thing for us is the gap between [Seasons] 1 and 2. What exactly happened?”
The new season is filmed in Malta, which is where cameras are rolling on Danger Money. The latter is not from the pens of the two brothers, but David Crow and Oliver Maltman.
“It’s a dramatic treasure hunt, and it’s sort of action and very comedy,” Hammond says of the show, which marks Winstone’s first outing for Prime Video. The Sexy Beast star plays an SAS veteran called Alan ‘Razor’ Sharp. He is struggling with his past when he gets pulled back into a world he had left behind. “It’s everything that I love because beneath the action, laughs and the hardman antics, there’s a lot of heart, soul and depth to this script,” Winstone said when the show was announced.
Two Brothers Originals
Anthony Francis
In terms of original ideas, the siblings created Nightswimming, which stars The Walking Dead’sLennie James as a man convicted of brutally murdering his family years ago and returning to his home in Portugal where the killings took place.
Production starts in January, in Portugal. “It has a dual timeline, a bit like The Missing, but this jumps into different pockets of time,” says Jack Williams.
Another original idea is Maya, which comes from longtime collaborator Daisy Haggard who has worked with the Williams on projects including Boat Story and Back To Life. In Maya, Haggard writes, directs and appears opposite The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey as a mother and daughter who are forced into witness protection.
The show was greenlit by Ollie Madden when he was at Channel 4, and Starz then boarded as co-producer, which speaks to a wider industry story. UK producers have been dealing with U.S. co-production money leaving the room in recent years, making financing their drama series ever more complex. Amid chatter the U.S. is opening back up to co-pros, Maya is a real-world example of a new trans-Atlantic co-pro.
In terms of industry trends, Latif says: “That’s been a pressure with the American funding, but then in terms of the casting attachments and delivering more scripts… you just have to build a bigger package now. But that helps us creatively because Sarah and the guys who built such an amazing slate with different writers that we can service different commissioners.”
Working with different buyers, from the streamers to pubcasters and the commercial channels means making dramas at different price points. No producer will ever push for lower budgets, but Harry Williams says Two Brothers is comfortable making the huge prestige dramas as well as shows with more modest budgets.
“Fleabag was not made for much money, and we [started in] comedy, so we’re used to working with smaller budgets. It’s about the right home for the show. You can make a really great-looking show for not that much money, or you can spend loads and it washes it over you.”
Accordingly, Channel 4, the edgiest of the UK’s pubcasters, was the right domestic fit for Maya, he adds. “It was more niche in some ways, and maybe on other channels it would have been pushed in another direction that didn’t suit the show.”
Two Brothers projects often have some connection with earlier work and collaborations, per their earlier colllab with Haggard. The connective tissue with Jack Green is an actor who had a short but memorable appearance in another Two Brothers show.
“Simon Nye is writing it for Jack Davenport because we worked with Jack on The Assassin,” Hammond says. “He just did one episode where he was a rival assassin and he was one of the funniest things in it. We all thought we should come up with an idea for him. And we’ve been looking to do something with Simon, so this is a returnable series about a disgruntled vet who has to start again.”
Staffing Up
Two Brothers has been bolstering its ranks, starting with Katie Churchill as Comedy Exec and Georgina Pickford as Head of Development, and then adding new staffers including Daisy Mount and Alex Mercer, who joined as Drama Execs, Lorena Wright as Head of Production and Cleo Hetherington, Co-Exec Producer.
If that allows the company to spin a considerable number of plates, Jack Williams says the vision remains the same. “It’s about finding stuff we love. We’re always led by ‘this is great and people should see it.’ Even if the linear side of things is harder to fund than before, and the streamers are taking more time, that’s OK. As the audience fragments, there’re more places to sell things.”
Harry Williams agrees the goal is, in some ways, straightforward. “Find great shows and not worry about the other stuff, that’s always been our main ethos.”
Worrying about other stuff is arguably the job of COO Latif, who has been with the prodco since 2018. He says that working across an array of different types of project with the writer at the heart remains the top priority. “Because of the timeline with drama you’ve always got to think two or three years ahead anyway, so that’s why we’re always focusing on the future. We want to keep the variety of productions coming through and keep working with newer and established writers. It’s always all about the content.”
Harry Williams says that piecing together funding for TV drama now often resembles the kind of financing jigsaw required for indie film.
That being the case, it feels apt that the brothers have a movie in the works that they would also direct. It’s early days but is billed as a twisty suburban thriller. Working title is Butterfly Collector.
