‘The Crown’ Producer Left Bank Adapting Bestselling Inspector Gamache Books In First Series For Amazon

EXCLUSIVE: Left Bank Pictures was trailblazing among British producers in forging strong ties with Netflix through The Crown — and now the company is on the brink of landing its first series with Amazon.

Deadline can reveal that Left Bank is closing a deal to adapt Louise Penny’s bestselling Chief Inspector Gamache crime novels for the Jeff Bezos-owned streamer, in a series titled Three Pines.

Left Bank has attached The Tunnel and Law & Order: UK writer Emilia di Girolamo to pen the show, while The Crown and Humans director Sam Donovan will be the lead director, helming four episodes.

The title, Three Pines, is a reference to the fictional French Canadian village in which Chief Inspector Gamache operates. The French-speaking detective probes crimes in his Quebec community, digging up long-buried secrets and discovering his own ghosts. Among his quirks is speaking English in an English accent thanks to his Cambridge education.

Penny’s first Gamache novel, Still Life, was published in 2005 and she has gone on to publish 14 other books in the series, the most recent of which was A Better Man last year, which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. She has won five Agatha Awards, which are handed to authors whose books typify the work of Agatha Christie in that they are layered mysteries with no explicit sex, gore, or gratuitous violence.

Three Pines will be filmed in Canada once the industry figures out ways around the coronavirus crisis. Although it is Left Bank’s first series for Amazon, it is not the first time the companies have worked together — they piloted Richard Madden sci-fi drama Oasis in 2017, but it was not picked up for a full series.

Chief Inspector Gamache has been reimagined for the screen previously. Canada’s CBC adapted Still Life for the 2013 television movie Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery, with Nathaniel Parker playing the fictional detective.