David Morrissey’s Gone Secures Pre-Sales Across North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe
All3media has secured several pre-sales for the six-part ITV crime drama Gone, which stars Eve Myles and david morrissey and was filmed and set in Bristol. The international demand arrives as the fictional series, inspired in part by a high-profile cold-case investigation, prepares to reach UK screens in early March.
David Morrissey’s Michael Polly at the centre of Gone
In Gone, david morrissey plays Michael Polly, an upstanding private school headmaster who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Sarah. The character is described as inscrutable, someone who values order and precision; that veneer is tested as Detective Annie Cassidy chips away at it in a cat-and-mouse investigation. The drama is built around the school setting, a foreboding forest and the quiet sprawl of Bristol, and was filmed in and around Bristol last year.
Eve Myles as Detective Annie Cassidy
Eve Myles leads the series as Det Annie Cassidy, a super-bright, gutsy investigator who pursues the missing-woman case at the heart of the six-part story. Myles, best known for roles in Broadchurch and Keeping Faith, has said she once considered quitting acting because of a lack of quality roles for women; she raised that concern at the Wales Screen Summit in October. In Gone, her character drives the inquiry that forces the community to confront hidden truths about Michael Polly.
Julie MacKay’s cold case investigation and its forensic chain of events
The fictional Detective Annie Cassidy is inspired by the career of Det Supt Julie MacKay (spelling unclear in the provided context), whose work on a long-running murder investigation provided the series’ real-world touchstone. That case began with the 1984 murder of Melanie Road, a 17-year-old who was killed while walking home from a nightclub in Bath. The investigation was reopened in 2009 when MacKay, recently transferred to Avon and Somerset’s cold case review team, pledged to Melanie’s mother that she would not stop until she found the killer. Over six years the team re-examined primitive evidence in an effort to extract modern DNA samples; in 2015 a young woman — who had not been born at the time of the murder — was arrested after a row with her boyfriend during which she broke his necklace. DNA taken from that woman produced a match that led investigators to her father, and in 2016 Christopher Hampton, from Fishponds in Bristol, changed his plea to guilty at the start of his trial. Hampton was jailed for life and must serve at least 22 years.
From To Hunt a Killer to the television screen
The pursuit of Melanie’s killer became the subject of a book titled To Hunt a Killer, credited in the material to Julie MacKay and Robert Murphy (Robert Murphy is named Rob Murphy elsewhere in the provided context). Both MacKay and Murphy worked as consultants on the television series, and the producers say the first series tells a fictional story that is nothing like the Melanie Road case even while drawing on the real investigator’s career to shape Annie Cassidy’s character. What makes this notable is how the producers have sought to combine fictional drama with procedural detail drawn from an actual six-year cold-case breakthrough that culminated in a 2016 guilty plea.
All3media pre-sales in North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe
Industry movement has followed creative momentum: All3media secured several pre-sales for Gone across North America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe, positioning the series for broad international distribution beyond its UK broadcast slot in early March. The pre-sales represent measurable traction for the project ahead of its domestic launch and reflect commercial appetite for a filmed-in-Bristol thriller that pairs a high-profile suspect figure with a strong female lead investigator.
The chain linking cold-case forensics to a dramatized narrative is clear: a 2009 reopening of a 1984 murder led to forensic reanalysis, a 2015 DNA match after an arrest, a 2016 guilty plea and a life sentence with a minimum 22-year term; that sequence of events in turn inspired a book and the creative consultants who helped shape Gone. With Eve Myles fronting the investigation on-screen and david morrissey anchoring the community figure whose life unravels, the series arrives with both a backstory rooted in real investigative work and international sales already in place.
