Peter Moffat’s 1960s Military Drama ‘The Last Post’ Is Coming To Amazon Prime Video

By Nancy Tartaglione, Deadline
Published Aug. 16, 2017, 1:09 p.m. ET

Amazon has boarded the Peter Moffat-created drama The Last Post as an Amazon Original in the U.S. where it will be available later this year. The six-part period series is set in the 1960s and centers on the lives of a Royal Military Police unit and their families in Aden, Yemen. It’s based on the childhood memories of Moffat who created the UK’s Criminal Justice and is now an EP on its U.S. version, HBO’s Emmy-nominated The Night Of.

The Last Post, which will air on BBC One in the UK, stars Jessica Raine‎ (Call The Midwife), Jessie Buckley (War And Peace), Jeremy Neumark Jones (Denial), Amanda Drew (Broadchurch), Ben Miles (Coupling) and Stephen Campbell Moore (History Boys)‎.

Moffat’s father was an officer in the Royal Military Police. In The Last Post, the men in the unit don’t have easy jobs. They are part soldiers, part policemen and full-time husbands and fathers who face constant insurgency and threat. The women struggle between being what the army requires and their true selves.

Moffat says, “Young married couples in the heart of the Sixties living in extremely close proximity in a very alien and dangerous environment has always struck me as ripe territory for drama. Men full of vim, vigor and a desire to be heroes in a situation where that isn’t always possible, alongside young women who are starting to feel the emancipation of the Sixties and a sense of new freedoms but who are living in a constrained setting where their role is supposed to be merely supportive.”

He adds, “My mum remembers standing on the balcony of our flat in her first week in Aden and seeing a hand grenade thrown killing a five-year-old boy and my dad rushing out to try and do something… Throw in rock-n-roll and tumultuous love stories alongside the unexplored territory of this period in our history and you have a pretty heady mix.”

Bonafide Films and The Forge Entertainment are producing for BBC One. Exec producers are Margery Bone and Elwen Rowlands, and George Faber and Mark Pybus. Matthew Read will executive produce for BBC One. The Casual Vacancy‘s Jonny Campbell and Women In Love‘s Miranda Bowen are directing.

BBC Worldwide is distributing internationally.