Hayley Squires and Bel Powley are Shy & Lola in darkly comic new drama

Two very different women are forced to become allies when a murder entangles them in the criminal underworld operating in a small coastal town in the North of England.

What do we know about Shy & Lola

The series is based on the French television drama Cheyenne and Lola, which was written by Virginie Brac, produced by Lincoln TV and STUDIOCANAL and distributed internationally by Federation International. This new 6 x 60 series for BBC iPlayer and BBC One is written by Amanda Coe (Apple Tree Yard, The Trial of Christine Keeler), with additional episodes written by Emilie Robson and Alys Metcalf. Sam Donovan (Severance, Down Cemetery Road, Utopia) is lead director, and Nadia Jaynes (The Responder, Big Mood) will produce.

As to the plot, the press release tells us:

The darkly comic story follows Shy and Lola, two very different women who are forced to become allies when a murder entangles them in the criminal underworld operating in Shy’s small coastal town in the North of England. Beginning as exploited novices, the unlikely duo turn out to have a talent for crime. As they build an operation that threatens to blow the local bad guys out of the water, opposing futures beckon – using their earnings to fund a fresh start, or becoming the new bosses in town.

Hayley Squires (The Night Manager, I, Daniel Blake) stars as Shy, a cleaner scraping by and dreaming of a new life in Portugal. Bel Powley (A Small Light, The Diary of a Teenage Girl) co-stars as Lola, an ex-model-turned-grifter who arrives in town with trouble at her heels. Further cast will be announced in due course. Filming is set to begin this spring in and around Hull and Leeds.