Niamh Algar, Tom Hollander to lead Sky’s Iris

Niamh Algar (Mary & George) and Tom Hollander (The White Lotus) will go head-to-head in new Sky thriller Iris, which is created and written by Luther’s Neil Cross.

Filming will begin this month in Sardinia, Italy, where this “sun-drenched chase thriller” follows a rootless and enigmatic genius, Iris Nixon (Algar), who steals a code from charming philanthropist Cameron McIntyre (Holland) and goes on the run.

Armed only with her lethal intelligence and chameleonic charm, the clock is ticking for her to work out what the code could unleash before she is found.

The cast also includes Meréana Tomlinson (The Trials), Sacha Dhawan (The Great), Maya Sansa (Good Morning Night), Peter Sullivan (Poldark) and Debi Mazar (Younger).

Iris Nixon is equal parts rootless genius and puzzle addict. By day, she works a mundane job flagging harmful content for a social media platform; by night she ploughs internet forums solving complex riddles. When a mysterious thread is posted online seeking highly intelligent individuals to crack a secretive code, Iris’s curiosity and compulsion to win get the better of her, and it leads her to a charming philanthropist, Cameron McIntyre.

Having outsmarted every code-breaker around the world, Iris realises she has unwittingly unlocked a dangerously powerful, world-changing piece of technology. Suspicious of Cameron’s motives, she steals the code and then… vanishes. Ever resourceful and intending to lay low, Iris reinvents herself as Ms Brooks, a tutor to Joy, the daughter of a wealthy family on the Sardinian coast. As the cyber-speculation as to Iris’ whereabouts intensifies and Cameron’s net closes in, her lethal intelligence and chameleonic charm may for once not be enough to stop her from being drawn into an increasingly deadly game of hide and seek.

Iris is a Sky Studios and Fremantle coproduction. Wildside is providing production services in Italy. The series is directed by Terry McDonough and Sarah O’Gorman, and the series producer is Tim Bricknell.

Susan E Connolly and Ian Scott McCullough are writing episodes. Executive producers are Neil Cross, Terry McDonough; Dante Di Loreto and Jenni Sherwood for Fremantle, and Adrian Sturges for Sky Studios.

Iris will be available on Sky and streaming service Now in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Fremantle will handle international sales of the series.

tagged in: Fremantle, Iris, Neil Cross, Niamh Algar, Sarah O’Gorman, Sky, Sky Studios, Terry McDonough, Tom Hollander, Wildside