The currently untitled series is already filming in Manchester and northern England. Netflix formally unveiled it on August 26 as part of its latest UK commissions, confirming six episodes and an unusually deep ensemble cast.
Danny Brocklehurst is writing the drama. Rather than announcing a conventional anthology, Netflix describes a young couple marooned in a fading seaside town and moving through several adaptations of Dahl's adult short stories while trying to escape.
This is a different corner of the Dahl library
Dahl's children's books dominate his modern screen identity, but his adult fiction often operated on nastier machinery: bad marriages, greed, deception, murder and endings designed to turn a seemingly ordinary situation inside out.
Brocklehurst has specifically spoken about characters including The Landlady, Mister Boggis and the Fingersmith while discussing the opportunity to bring those stories into a contemporary setting.
That does not yet tell us which six stories Netflix has selected. The streamer is keeping the episode-by-episode structure under wraps.
Nicola Coughlan is only one piece of a very large cast
Naomi Scott, Josh Finan, Imelda Staunton, Nicola Coughlan, Toby Jones, Carmen Ejogo, Dominic West, Christine Tremarco, Michael Socha and Clarke Peters are all confirmed.
Character details are much thinner. Production photographs taken before Netflix's full announcement show Coughlan filming material associated with Lamb to the Slaughter, but Netflix has not released a complete casting map for the other stories.
Runyararo Mapfumo and Ben Gregor are directing. Orchid Pictures produces, with Suzanne Mackie, Gabriel Silver and Brocklehurst serving among the executive producers and Sarah Lewis as series producer.
Netflix bought much more than Willy Wonka
The company acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company in 2021, giving it control of a literary catalogue that reaches considerably beyond the children's titles most frequently adapted for film and television.
Wes Anderson already explored some of the shorter material for Netflix through The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and its companion films. This series takes another route by turning the adult stories into a six-episode dramatic framework built around recurring protagonists.
The comparison with Tales of the Unexpected is unavoidable but still needs a qualification. Dahl's stories powered the early years of that British anthology, yet Netflix has not officially named this new production Tales of the Unexpected or described it as a direct remake.
Production is underway. Netflix has not announced a release date.
