The Ruby in the Smoke

Billie Piper returns to the small screen in this adaptation of award-winning novelist Philip Pullman's first in a quartet of books about Victorian heroine Sally Lockhart. Sixteen-year-old Sally has little in the way of academic knowledge, but has a thorough grounding in military tactics, can ride like the wind and shoot straight with a pistol. So when her father dies in mysterious circumstances during a voyage to the South China Sea, followed soon after by a letter containing a strange warning, it becomes clear that Sally is in danger and will need to draw on all her skills. The stellar cast also includes Julie Walters, Robert Glenister, David Harewood, Ramon Tikaram, JJ Field and Don Gilet. Adapted for the screen by Bafta-winning writer Adrian Hodges (Charles II, Rome, The Lost World). Pullman's second book in the series, The Shadow in the North, has already been filmed and will follow next year