‘Victoria’ star Jenna Coleman leads new detective drama ‘The Jetty’

The BBC has ordered a new thriller series starring Jenna Coleman.

Best known for her roles in Victoria, The Serpent, Doctor Who, and The Cry, the 37-year-old English actress will lead the cast of The Jetty.

Coleman will play rookie detective Ember Manning in the four-part drama.

The Jetty sees a fire tear through a holiday home in a scenic Lancashire lake town, the synopsis tells us.

“Detective Ember Manning must work out how it connects to a podcast journalist investigating a missing persons cold case and an illicit ‘love’ triangle between a man in his twenties and two underage girls.

“But as Ember gets close to the truth, it threatens to destroy her life – forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, present and the town she’s always called home.”

The commission was announced today at the Edinburgh TV Festival by Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama.

“The Jetty is so much more than a crime thriller, and with Cat Jones as writer, Firebird Pictures producing and Jenna in the lead role of Ember Manning, I know we have the perfect team in place to create a truly brilliant, brave series,” promises Salt.

Writer and creator Cat Jones has previously written episodes of Harlots, EastEnders, and Waterloo Road.

“I’m thrilled to be making The Jetty for BBC One,” she commented. “Like millions of people all over the world, I’ve grown up loving and admiring BBC dramas, so getting to create one really is a dream come true.”

“The Jetty is a story I’ve wanted to tell for a long time but it wasn’t until it found its champions at the fantastically writer friendly Firebird, that it really came to life,” she added.

“What feels like a total dream team continues to grow with the addition of Marialy Rivas to direct and the brilliant Jenna Coleman. I’ve no doubt audiences are going to be completely transfixed by her as Ember.”

The show comes from Bodyguard exec Elizabeth Kilgarriff, who worked with Jenna Coleman before on the BBC’s hit drama The Cry.

She said: “To have the opportunity to work with Jenna again – and see her bring our complex, funny and utterly human heroine Ember to life on BBC One, couldn’t be more exciting – and I can’t wait to see the visual magic that the brilliant [director] Marialy Rivas weaves as this powerful and gripping story unfolds.”

The Jetty will premiere in the UK on BBC One and streaming on BBC iPlayer in 2024.

Jenna Coleman will be back on our screens this autumn in Wilderness, a new psychological thriller on Prime Video.

All three seasons of Victoria are available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.