DirecTV’s Audience Network has picked up the US rights to two acclaimed dramas, the Australian series The Slap and the British thriller The Shadow Line, and will begin airing both in February.
Based on Christos Tsiolkas’s novel, The Slap is an eight-part drama that turns on a single moment: at a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. Each episode follows the fallout from the perspective of a different person who was there, drawing out tensions around family, class and culture. It originally aired on ABC in Australia.
The Shadow Line, a seven-part crime drama, was created, written and directed by Hugo Blick for BBC Two. Telling its story from both sides of a murder investigation, the police and the criminals, it stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Christopher Eccleston, with a cast that also includes Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall and Lesley Sharp.
Both series add to the Audience Network’s slate of imported drama, which already includes the FX thriller Damages.