‘Codename: Annika’: SkyShowtime Unveils Cast & Trailer
SkyShowtime has unveiled cast and trailer for Codename: Annika, one of the fledgling Paramount/Comcast JV’s biggest originals to date. The series follows a Finnish detective, Emma Haka, played by Sannah Nedergård (Yellow Sulphur Sky), who is still completing her undercover training when she gets sent on a mission into Stockholm’s corrupt world of fine art trade. Unveiled at the Stockholm International Film Festival, Codename from Mia Ylönen and Aleksi Bardy will star the likes of Ardalan Esmaili (Easy Money) as Rasmus Ståhlgren, Eva Melander (Border) as Rina Olander and Helena Bergström (House of Angels) as Agatha Torstensson, along with Pekka Strang (Tom of Finland) as Raimo Korpi, Clarisse Lhoni-Botte (Rolling to You) as Béatrice Joly and Charles Martins (Emily in Paris) as Denver Carpentier. Show will launch next month on the streaming service that is available in territories in which Comcast’s Peacock and Paramount+ haven’t rolled out. “This will be our first Swedish-Finnish original series and is a fantastic twist on the Nordic Noir genre,” said SkyShowtime CEO Monty Sarhan. The streamer unveiled a hefty originals slate at Cannes that included Spain’s Las Invisibles and Poland’s Warszawianka. Speaking to Deadline in June, Sarhan said the platform is “sending a message that our content doesn’t have to cost a fortune to watch.”
ITV Studios Appoints First Access Coordinator
ITV Studios has appointed its first in-house Access Coordinator. Bethany Matthews will work alongside production teams across seven drama labels to ensure all production teams, crew and cast complete accessibility training while reviewing the accessibility of production sites and working with post-production to ensure accessible editing facilities. She is one of the first 12 Access Coordinators to be trained in the UK by training body ScreenSkills and consultancy Bridge06. The news comes as ITV Studios becomes an associate member of the UK’s TV Access Project (TAP), which aims to improve accessibility for disabled people in the TV industry and is backed by the likes of Help scribe Jack Thorne. Deadline broke the news of TAP’s launch last year in the run up to the Edinburgh TV Festival and the project counts major broadcasters and networks as fellow signees. “This is about the bigger picture for me,” said Matthews, who reports to Director of Production, Drama, Julie Clark. “When accessibility is at the forefront of production, whether it’s through making the casting process or post-production more accessible to talent, we’ll really start to see talent that the industry has been missing.”