'Honey' Cold War Spy-Romance Thriller Premieres at Mipcom — SkimNews
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- BBC-ZDF series 'Honey' premiered at Mipcom on Monday, with Fifth Season handling international sales of the Cold War thriller set in 1982 East Berlin
- Emma Moran, lead writer and executive producer, said she mined real CIA and MI6 spycraft for comedy, citing prosthetic testicles used to hide notes and cameras strapped to pigeons as inspirations
- Ann Skelly stars as MI6 agent Martha in a love triangle, alongside Nate Mann, Jannis Niewöhner, and Rory Kinnear; she filmed in Lithuania during its coldest winter since the 1970s
- Sally Woodward Gentle of Sid Gentle Films, the producer behind 'Killing Eve,' serves as executive producer, with Moran noting the team explicitly rejected making a 'brown, turgid period show'
- Fifth Season's Jennifer Ebell called the show a rare example of commercially viable content with a distinct voice, pitching it as winter binging fare
- The series is set in 1982, and Moran pointed to seven years of story runway before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, indicating room for the show to continue
Why it matters: Sid Gentle Films, the indie behind 'Killing Eve,' is now applying its female-led spy-thriller playbook to a BBC-ZDF co-production, betting that blending romance with Cold War espionage can replicate that earlier commercial breakthrough. With Fifth Season selling internationally and a 1982 starting point, the creators have explicitly built in runway for multi-season storytelling ahead of the Wall's fall.
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