Doctor Who star David Tennant has transformed into investigative journalist Nick Davies in first-look images from ITV’s forthcoming seven-part phone hacking drama, The Hack.
The series will span events that took place between 2002 and 2012, focusing specifically on the phone hacking scandal that led to the shutting down of the News of the World.
Investigations uncovered countless unethical practices by the paper’s journalists, who tapped into the voicemails and phones of celebrities, murder victims, their families and members of the royal family.
Tennant will appear alongside Robert Carlyle as former Met Police detective chief superintendent Dave Cook and Toby Jones as former editor-in-chief of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger.
The script, written by Adolescence screenwriter Jack Thorne, will follow Davies as he discovers evidence of the goings-on at the News of the World and Cook as he investigates the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.
Following in the footsteps of last year’s critically acclaimed series Mr Bates vs The Post Office, The Hack will be produced by part of the same team behind the Bafta-winning programme, which sparked widespread public outcry about the false convictions of sub-postmasters.
When The Hack was announced back in January, Thorne said of the saga: “This is a strange and deceptive piece of our recent history, one with so many layers to it. I thought, as someone who is interested in politics, I understood everything that happened. I did not.”
He added: “It’s a fight for the truth that really shocked me. That is why it matters to tell this story now in an age where the truth seems more in danger than ever.”
An exact release date for the programme is yet to be announced, but ITV has confirmed that The Hack will air on ITV and STV at some point later this year and be available for streaming on ITVX and STV Player.
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Speaking to James Acaster and Ed Gamble on their Off Menu podcast earlier this year, Tennant said that shooting the series had been “very intense”.
“Just because there’s a lot of quite complicated information in that,” he explained. “I’m playing a journalist who sort of broke the case open, and there’s just a lot of quite technical stuff.”
He continued: “Obviously you have to be very specific on that because there’s a lot of lawyers watching to make sure you don’t say the wrong thing.
“That was quite a long shoot and that was very intense. But you then do something like that and you’re very proud to be part of something like that. It’s one of the stories of our time that needs telling.”
