BBC America Greenlights New Drama The Last Kingdom

BBC America has announced that new drama The Last Kingdom has been picked up to series and given an eight-episode first season order.

“We couldn’t be more pleased to be working with BBC Two and Carnival Films – a hugely successful British production company that really knows how to create a hit for the US. The Last Kingdom is an engrossing story of epic scale that will feed our audience’s appetite for excitement, smart storytelling and compelling characters,” said Richard De Croce, SVP Programming, BBC America.

Based on Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories and adapted for television by Stephen Butchard (House of Saddam), The Last Kingdom is set in the year 872 and finds England having fallen to a Viking invasion, with Wessex defiant under the rule of Alfred the Great. The story follows Uhtred, the son of a Saxon nobleman who was kidnapped by the Vikings and raised as one of their own. As he grows older, he’s forced to figure out whether he identifies more as Saxon or Viking and tread the line between the two for no other reason than his own safety.

The Last Kingdom joins an ever-growing scripted slate for BBC America, which currently includes the likes of Orphan Black, Almost Royal, and Intruders. Additionally, BBC America has imported such projects as The Musketeers, Atlantis, and In the Flesh to go along with their original programming.

Will you be watching The Last Kingdom? Do you think the show will find an audience on BBC America? How can The Last Kingdom differentiate itself from History’s Vikings?