Channel 4 Monday 31 March at 9pm

Based on the best-selling novel by Clare Allan, Poppy Shakespeare is a 90-minute drama for Channel 4 from Cowboy Films, producers of Film4's Oscar-winning film The Last King of Scotland. Funny, original and moving, Poppy Shakespeare is a candid look at life from the perspective of a patient on the psychiatric ward of a North London day hospital.

Produced by Cowboy Films Ltd, Poppy Shakespeare stars Naomie Harris (Pirates of the Caribbean, Miami Vice, White Teeth;C4) as Poppy Shakespeare, a new and worryingly sane patient who arrives at a North London psychiatric ward dressed up to the nines, insisting that she is not mentally ill.

Poppy Shakespeare is told through the eyes of N, played by BAFTA award winner Anna Maxwell Martin (Becoming Jane, Bleak House;BBC One), a 13 year veteran of the hospital and self-confessed 'dribbler' who severed links with the outside world many years ago and has since made it her sole ambition never to be released.

An unlikely friendship blossoms between the pair when N is charged with looking after the new arrival. Although she cannot understand why Poppy is unhappy attending the ward, N agrees to help her make a break for freedom. To qualify for release the pair must first prove that Poppy isn't mad – but they quickly find themselves in a catch 22 situation; to prove she is sane she must pretend to be mad.

Top