Wunmi Mosaku, who won a BAFTA last year for her performance in BBC’s “Damilola, Our Loved Boy,” will join Idris Elba in the fifth season of Emmy-nominated crime drama “Luther,” which has started shooting in London.
Elba, who won a Golden Globe and SAG Award for the role, returns as Detective Chief Inspector John Luther in the series created by Emmy-nominated Neil Cross and produced by BBC Studios. Mosaku, who currently can be seen in Jack Thorne’s “Kiri” on Britain’s Channel 4 and “The End of the F—ing World” on Netflix, plays new recruit Detective Sgt. Catherine Halliday in “Luther.” Dermot Crowley, Michael Smiley and Patrick Malahide return in the four-part season as detective superintendents Martin Schenk, Benny Silver and George Cornelius.
According to a BBC statement, “as a series of monstrous killings becomes ever more audacious, Luther and new recruit D.S. Catherine Halliday are confounded by a tangle of leads and misdirection that seems designed to protect an unspeakable horror.
“But even as the case brings him closer than ever to the nature of true evil, a reluctant Luther must also face the ghosts of his own past. Striding back into the line of fire, he must choose who to protect…and who to sacrifice. Whatever his next move, it will have devastating consequences for those around him — and change John Luther forever.”
Piers Wenger, the BBC’s drama chief, said: “It’s fantastic to have Idris Elba and the team back filming in London, and we are thrilled that the exceptional Wunmi Mosaku will be returning to BBC One to join this already stellar cast. Neil Cross’ scripts for this fifth [season] of ‘Luther’ are explosive and fans won’t be disappointed.”
Cross said: “We missed John Luther. We missed some old friends. And we wanted to make the biggest, scariest, darkest, most thrilling [season] of ‘Luther’ there’s ever been. So that’s what we’ve come back to do.”
Mosaku, who is represented by Scott Marshall, Gersh and Principal Entertainment LA, appeared alongside Elba last year in Sky Atlantic/Showtime’s “Guerrilla,” written and directed by John Ridley. She also starred opposite Helen McCrory in ITV legal thriller “Fearless.”
In 2016, Mosaku appeared in “Playtest,” one of six episodes in the third season of Charlie Brooker’s “Black Mirror” on Netflix. The same year, she played the role of Gloria Taylor, the mother of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor, in the television drama “Damilola, Our Loved Boy,” for which won the BAFTA for supporting actress.
Other notable credits include “I Am Slave,” “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” “Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Philomena,” and Stephen Poliakoff’s “Dancing on the Edge.”
“Luther” was commissioned by Wenger and Charlotte Moore for the BBC’s flagship channel, BBC One, and is produced by BBC Studios, the BBC’s commercial production arm. Executive producers are Elba for Green Door Pictures, Cross, Marcus Wilson and Hilary Salmon for BBC Studios, and Elizabeth Kilgarriff for the BBC. The series will be produced by Derek Ritchie, directed by Jamie Payne (“The Alienist,” “White Princess”), and distributed by BBC Worldwide.
Salmon said: “There aren’t many shows where the first day of filming feels like an event, but ‘Luther’ is certainly one of them. Thrilled to be in production with a new [season] of the show that has set the bar in terms of British television crime drama.”
