Ronan Bennett's 'Army Of Shadows' series filming in UK and France

Ronan Bennett’s adaptation of Army of Shadows has begun filming in the UK and France for Channel 4.

The cast of the six-part drama includes Paddy Considine, America Ferrera, Kit Harington and Alex Hassell. Filming is taking place in Manchester, Liverpool, London and Paris.

The show has been inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 film and Joseph Kessel’s seminal book of the same name, which dramatised the emergence of the local resistance to the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War.

Bennett (The Day of the Jackal, Top Boy) is re-telling the story by exploring how resistance takes shape in a near-future occupied Britain.

The series, which is being co-produced by Two Cities Television and Studiocanal, shows a Britain that looks almost normal, though the flags are different and certain things are not said aloud anymore. Under the surface of this apparently ordinary world, people are aware that something has gone terribly, quietly wrong.

A former soldier known only as Berry emerges from the shadows to start building a secret resistance network and an unlikely group starts to coalesce around him, including a soldier, a student, a radiographer and a journalist.

Together they face a state with unlimited reach, a ruthless minister who’ll do whatever it takes to maintain order, and an American intelligence operative who is excellent at her job.

The series has been developed and is being produced with the support of the Melville family and the Kessel estate, which is controlled by the Irish Red Cross.

Army of Shadows has been commissioned for C4 by Gwawr Lloyd, interim head of drama, and Gemma Boswell and Rebecca Holdsworth, drama commissioning editors. Paul Gilbert and M-K Kennedy exec produce for StudioCanal Television, alongside Ron Halpern and Joe Naftalin for StudioCanal, with Stephen Wright and Michael Jackson for Two Cities Television and Bennett.

Alison Sterling serves as series producer, with Lisa Gunning (Black Doves) helming the show.

StudioCanal developed the series with STV Studios-backed Two Cities Television.