ITV has officially greenlit First Woman, an ambitious six-part lunar thriller starring Andrea Riseborough and Ashley Walters.
A high-profile co-production between Mammoth Screen (ITV Studios), Alcon Television Group, and Germany’s ZDF, the series centers on the mysterious disappearance of Claire (Andrea Riseborough), a biologist who made history as the first woman to set foot on the moon.
When Andrea Riseborough’s character vanishes into the long lunar night from the UK’s first moonbase, her husband Ben (Walters) is thrust into a global media storm and a desperate race against time to uncover the truth from hundreds of thousands of miles away. The narrative blends high-stakes suspense with a deeply moving human drama, putting a marriage to the ultimate test against the backdrop of the modern, private space race and geopolitical tensions with a rival Chinese lunar base.
Production is currently underway in Belfast, utilizing Studio Ulster, the UK’s most advanced virtual production facility, to create a hyper-realistic lunar landscape and moonbase. Directed by Emmy and BAFTA winner Philip Martin and written by a lead team including Lydia Yeoman and George Oakes, the project represents a milestone in international television financing. For Alcon Television Group, this marks their first major foray into international co-financed partnerships of this scale.
By combining cutting-edge technology with a propulsive, character-driven script, First Woman is poised to be one of ITV’s most cinematic and technically daring dramas to date, offering a fresh take on the thriller genre within an as-yet-unexplored frontier.
