Showtime Commits To A 20 Episode Order Of Daniel Craig’s PURITY

US Cable network Showtime has officially closed a deal to show a 20 episode, two season run of Daniel Craig’s Purity.

Todd Field will direct all 20 episodes of the Jonathan Franzen adaptation, which will be written by Field, Franzen and David Hare. The show will start shooting in 2017 and the 20 episodes will be spread over two years.

Purity, which had been originally envisioned as a feature,  is a morally complex story of youthful idealism, extreme loyalty and cold-blooded murder, featuring characters both hungry for the truth and desperate to hide it. From STASI offspring to Oakland anarchists, Franzen tracks his characters’ landscapes from East Berlin and the Bolivian jungle to East Harlem walk-ups and the California Redwoods in a decades-spanning tragicomedy that builds to a contemporary climax. The book, published last September, centers on Pip, a young American woman who does not know who she is, and Andreas Wolf, a charismatic German provocateur, who will be played by Craig. He heads a South America-based organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world where Pip gets an internship  in search of her identity.

This is great news for fans of quality television – but maybe not so good for fans of Daniel Craig’s turn as James Bond. Will he be willing to jump into playing everybody’s secret agent after filming 20 hours of television?

Source: Deadline