Richard Dormer will lead the cast of “The Watch,” an upcoming BBC America series based on stories from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books.
Dormer, who played Beric Dondarrion in “Game of Thrones,” will star as Sam Vimes, the captain of a band of misfit cops known as The Watch.
Set in the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork, where crime is legal, “The Watch” is billed as an anarchic drama.
The eight-episode series follows The Watch as the group rises up from decades of helplessness to save their corrupt city from catastrophe.
It is based on “City Watch,” a spinoff series within Pratchett’s bestselling “Discworld” novels.
“I’m so thrilled to be part of this brilliant madness and mayhem,” Dormer said.
“I was immediately drawn to the multitude of layers to Sam Vimes, and I find the dynamic between him and his band of disenfranchised comrades very compelling.
Also joining the cast are Adam Hugill (“1917”), Jo Eaton-Kent (“Don’t Forget the Driver”), Marama Corlett (“Blood Drive”), Lara Rossi (“Crossing Lines”) and Sam Adewunmi (“The Last Tree”)
Eaton-Kent will be Constable Cheery in the series.
Hugill will play idealistic new recruit Constable Carrot and Corlett the mysterious Corporal Angua, who is tasked with Carrot’s training.
Rossi is the formidable Lady Sybil Ramkin, last scion of Ankh-Morpork’s nobility, and Adewunmi is the wronged Carcer Dun, who is out to take control of the city.
BBC Studios is making the series alongside Narrativia, which Pratchett, who died in 2015, launched in 2012.
It was also a production partner on Amazon’s adaptation of Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s “Good Omens.”
Simon Allen (“The Musketeers”) is the lead writer on “The Watch.”
Craig Viveiros (“And Then There Were None”) will direct. The series will shoot in South Africa, starting at the end of this month.
AMC Network’s Entertainment Group & AMC Studios president Sarah Barnett said: “Richard Dormer will kill it as Sam Vimes, not your everyday male anti-hero.
Simon Allen and Rob Wilkins approach this adaptation with the kind of iconoclastic energy and openhearted love that will truly honor the indelible legacy of Sir Terry.”
