West Midlands based production company Checklist Films has confirmed that Nick Arthurs, BAFTA awarded Film and TV Editor with credits including ‘The Witcher’, ‘A Discovery of Witches’ and ‘The Alienist’, is attached as a Development Producer to help them craft their newly announced six-part drama, ‘The Iron Rose‘, which chronicles the dramatic lives of the Mushet family during Britain’s Industrial Revolution, into a multi-episode television series.
Inspired by true events, ‘The Iron Rose’ is an epic Victorian saga based on the story of the Glostonian iron and steel pioneer Robert Forester Mushet and his family as they fight to make and retain their fortune in 1800’s industrial Britain.
Nick Arthurs:
“The fortunes and misfortunes of the Mushet family is a saga of family feuds, love affairs, sex and greed in the grand tradition of ‘Poldark’ and ‘Succession’. It’s a rich and layered story that has fascinated West Country residents for years but is relatively unknown beyond this. However, I believe ‘The Iron Rose’ has all the traits of a tantalising saga that could run for multiple seasons, and I’m delighted to have been invited by Hakam and Checklist Films to help with, and advise on, the project’s development.”
Produced by Checklist Films, ‘The Iron Rose’ is being developed as a six part returning period drama series, to air in hour-long slots. Told through the eyes of the family business successor Robert Forester Mushet from his youth, ‘The Iron Rose’ tells the story of love, hate, loyalty and jealousy, ambition and despair, deception and dishonour, during a time when Britain was rapidly changing, and families strived – and feuded – to stay ahead or get forgotten about in the annals of time.
Descending from a family of power spanning generations, Robert Forester Mushet is an ambitious man, obsessed with the innovative and technological advances of the industrial age, and making a name for himself. As hot as the molten metal he produces and as tough as the steel he goes on to invent, he is risking it all by putting his personal happiness and fortune on the line to pioneer the next big thing. But as success descends upon the family, he soon tastes the betrayal and deceit as other ambitious men circle to capitalise on his inventions and finds himself battling the dreaded Mushet curse, which plagues his family.
Weaving multiple stories of the intermeshed lives of family, friends and antagonists, The Iron Rose mixes passion, intrigue and love affairs with the ruthless ambitions of the 1800’s Iron Masters jostling for position and power. This little-known slice of history is set to grip audiences across the globe.
Hakam Poselay, Checklist Films CEO and Executive Producer:
“We couldn’t be happier to have Nick Arthurs as a Development Producer on ‘The Iron Rose’. Not only does he have an incredibly extensive background in acclaimed high-end drama, but he shares the same passion as us to tell fascinating and little-known stories on an epic scale. His vision and wealth of experience will hugely enrich the drama, and his enthusiasm for the project demonstrates that ‘The Iron Rose’ is already attracting talent of an exceptional calibre.”
‘The Iron Rose’ is created by Keith Thomas and written by John F. McDonald. Executive Producers are Hakam Poselay and Keith Thomas. The series will shoot and feature locations from across Gloucestershire, including the Forest of Dean.
Checklist Films is an independent production company based in the West Midlands, and was founded by the award-winning writer/ producer Hakam Poselay (‘Checking In’, ‘Light the Lights’). The production company specialises in producing original, diverse, thought-provoking and evocative returning and limited dramas and films for the global market, and has a passion to tell little-known stories that stem from the West Midlands and West Country. Checklist Films has partnered with local talent provider CREW Birmingham, and with Birmingham University and TEP on production sustainability.
