Downton Abbey may be drawing to a close with its sixth and final season this year, but the BBC is said to have commissioned a pilot episode of a new, grand period drama, also set in the estate of a wealthy British family.
The BBC are working on an adaptation of Catherine Bailey’s novel Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty, which tells the true story of the Fitzwilliam family and their coalmining empire in the 19th Century.
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The Fitzwilliam estate, Wentworth House, once employed more than 100 staff and servants and could now be made open to the public by the National Trust, which would mean it could be used as a film set.
Black Diamonds is reportedly being produced by David Aukin, and is being adapted by Neil McKay, who wrote the 1998 TV adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and wrote two episodes of the Dominic West-starring drama Appropriate Adult about Fred and Rose West.
The story of the Fitzwilliam family is fraught with drama - they were forced to abandon their stately home, and there was dispute over whether their supposed heirs were actually imposters to the Fitzwilliam fortune.
