The Chapman Brothers make their first foray into television with Jake Chapman’s romance Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor on Sky Arts

Internationally renowned visual artist Jake Chapman will unveil his first television drama, Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor on Sky Arts this summer. The highly original, twisted ‘romance’ will star Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spiderman) and rising star, Sophie Kennedy Clark (Philomena) in a wildly imaginative, hypnotic and strangely unsettling four-part drama from the mind of one half of the Turner Prize-nominated duo.

In Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, our heroine Lydia (Kennedy Clark) has been gifted a desert island by her fiancée, dashing surgeon Algernon, as a wedding present. She goes to the island to wait for him but meets Helmut (Ifans), a reclusive and misshapen author. Helmut exerts a strange control over Lydia who, battling with her emotions, begins to suspect that all is not what it seems on the island. As she waits for the return of her beloved Algernon, Lydia starts to question everything around her and battles desperately to determine what is real – and what is her own fantasy…

Taking inspiration from romantic novels of times gone by, Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor celebrates the genre and offers a playful twist on tried and test romance themes.

Jake Chapman commented: "After dedicating most of my artistic life to examining the dark underbelly of human existence, I was utterly delighted when Sky Arts expressed interest in a lesser-known facet of my creative passion. With the blessing of Sky Arts, my romantic novel 'The Marriage of Reason and Squalor' is now being transformed into a four part TV drama - I can only thank them for going out on such a limb..."

Philip Edgar-Jones, Director, Sky Arts commented: “We loved Jake’s idea from the outset and the real thing promises to bring this unique creation to life in full technicolour glory. We’re always on the look-out for drama ideas that will deliver artistic TV as well as compelling storytelling and this does both. It’s a gorgeously dark romantic tale with something really interesting to say at its heart.”

Filmed in Barbados and West London, Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor offers insight into the spectacularly creative mind of one of the world’s leading visual artists, in a way that’s never before been seen on screen.

Airing later this year on Sky Arts, Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor is the latest original drama to be announced by Sky in the week that sees its most ambitious drama yet, Fortitude premiere on Sky Atlantic. The drama continues with a raft of new commissions lined-up including  Birthday – starring Stephen Mangan as a pregnant man, for Sky Arts; acclaimed crime writer Harlan Coben’s debut television project The Five and Timothy Spall and Matthew MacFadyen in Enfield Haunting on Sky Living; Jack Thorne’s The Last Panthers, starring Samantha Morton and John Hurt, launching on Sky Atlantic; and Critical, the new medical drama from Line of Duty writer Jed Mercurio and Raymond Briggs’ much-loved classic Fungus the Bogeyman coming to Sky 1

First look images of Rhys Ifans and Sophie Kennedy Clark in character available on request.

For further information, please contact:

Sky
Ffion Williams
PR Manager, Sky Arts
ffion.williams@bskyb.com   
020 7032 0599

Sky Arts

Follow us on twitter @skyarts
For images, please go to Imagenet or email Stills@bskyb.com

Notes to Editors
Mills and Doom: The Marriage of Reason and Squalor was commissioned for Sky Arts by Jo McClellan. Colin Vaines is the producer, for Morass Productions, and Andy Noble is co-producer.
 
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