Channel 4, Studiocanal and Two Cities Television Announce Academy Award Winners Susan Sarandon and Olivia Colman to Join Cast of Army of Shadows

Academy Award-winning Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking, Thelma & Louise) and Olivia Colman (The Favourite, The Crown) have joined the cast of BAFTA award-winning Ronan Bennett’s (The Day of The Jackal, MobLand) highly anticipated new series Army of Shadows, for Channel 4. Co-produced by STUDIOCANAL (Playing Nice, Families Like Ours) and Two Cities Television (Blue Lights, Patrick Melrose), they join the previously announced Paddy Considine, America Ferrera, Alex Hassell and Kit Harington. All six episodes will be directed by Lisa Gunning (Black Doves, The Power).

Also joining the ensemble cast are Leila Farzad (I Hate Suzie, Two Weeks in August), Luther Ford (The Man I Love, The Crown), Amara Okereke (The Choral, In the Lost Lands), Patrick O’Kane (Steal, The Day of the Jackal), Anjli Mohindra (Half Man, The Lazarus Project), Ed Ashley (Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Masters of the Air) and Zoë Telford (The Crow Girl, The Lazarus Project).

A drama inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 film and Joseph Kessel’s seminal book of the same name, which famously dramatised the emergence of the French Resistance to the Nazi Occupation of France during World War 2, Army of Shadows is a bold new story from Ronan Bennett of how resistance takes shape in an occupied Great Britain. The series has been developed and produced with the support of the Melville family and the Kessel estate. Royalties from Kessel's works are bequeathed to the Irish Red Cross.

 Britain looks almost normal, but the flags are different, the news is careful, and nobody says certain things out loud anymore. But everyone can feel it. Somewhere beneath the surface of ordinary life something has gone terribly, quietly wrong. Out of the shadows emerges a former soldier known only as Berry, who starts building a secret resistance network. He knows one thing above all else: don't act before you're ready. An unlikely group starts to coalesce around him - people who've decided they can't look away any longer: a soldier, a student, a radiographer, a journalist. Ordinary people, with ordinary lives, making an extraordinary and irreversible choice.

 Against them: a state with unlimited reach, a ruthless minister who'll do whatever it takes to maintain “order”, and an American intelligence operative called Jessie, who is very, very good at her job. Army of Shadows is a tense, propulsive thriller about what resistance actually costs. If your country were occupied, what would you do?

 Army of Shadows has been commissioned for Channel 4 by Gwawr Lloyd, Interim Head of Drama for Channel 4 and Gemma Boswell and Rebecca Holdsworth, Drama Commissioning Editors, Channel 4.  Executive Producers are Paul Gilbert and M-K Kennedy for STUDIOCANAL Television; Ron Halpern and Joe Naftalin for STUDIOCANAL, with Stephen Wright and Michael Jackson for Two Cities Television alongside Ronan Bennett. STUDIOCANAL developed the series from inception with Two Cities Television, which is part of STV Studios. Alison Sterling is the Series Producer.

 STUDIOCANAL is handling international sales and worldwide distribution and will launch worldwide sales at MIPCOM 2026.