Boat Story is a British thriller television miniseries made for BBC One and Amazon Freevee by the All3Media production company, Two Brothers Pictures. Written and co-directed by Harry and Jack Williams, it stars Daisy Haggard, Paterson Joseph, Tchéky Karyo, Joanna Scanlan, Craig Fairbrass and Phil Daniels.
| Boat Story | |
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| Theme music composer | Dominik Scherrer[1] |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
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| Producer | Matthew Bird |
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| Release | 19 November (2023-11-19) – 4 December 2023 (2023-12-04) |
Cocaine is found on a boat by two hard-up strangers, Janet (Haggard) and Samuel (Joseph), who agree to sell it and split the proceeds. They quickly find themselves entangled with the police, masked hitmen and a sharp-suited gangster known as 'The Tailor' (Karyo).[2]
The project was announced by the BBC and Amazon Freevee in November 2022 as a six-part series, produced by Two Brothers Pictures of All3Media. Written by Harry and Jack Williams, the actors Haggard, Joseph, Daniels, Scanlan, Karyo and Fairbrass were announced as the cast.[3] The Williams brothers direct episodes, as do Alice Troughton and Daniel Nettheim.[4]
Filming took place on Coatham Beach, Redcar on the Yorkshire coast in November 2022.[5] Filming also took place in Redcar,[6] Selby,[7] and Halifax in 2023.[8]
Jasper Rees in The Daily Telegraph gave the show four stars out of five, praising the performances of “likeable” Haggard and Joseph, noting that the tone swung “wildly between carefree irony and repellent savagery” noting that “in the first episode, a tongue is severed with brutal nonchalance while bodies pile profligately high in a Tarantino-esque killing spree.”[9] Nick Hilton in The Independent gave the series three stars out of five, praising Haggard as “a terrific presence”, but found the “quippy tone grating” compared to the violence akin to “directors like the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin McDonagh” and “humour mixed with a blackness colour-matched from the darkest recesses of the universe”.[10] Lucy ManganinThe Guardian also praised the performance of Haggard and gave the series five stars, saying that “cleverness, style and innovation” saying that she “loved it” and found it evokes “Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers in its ability to mash genres together.[11]
Boat Story premiered on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom on 19 November 2023, and was released on Amazon Freevee in the United States on 12 March 2024.[12]