‘Blue Lights’ Director Gilles Bannier To Head Alef UK – New Drama Indie Sets Thriller ‘Mind Reader’ As Its First Project

EXCLUSIVE: Gilles Bannier, the director of the first seasons of hit series Blue Lights and Trigger Point is opening up a new drama indie, Alef UK. The London-based label will be a subsidiary of Alef One, Nora Melhli’s Paris-based prodco that counts Flight MH370 and doc Carlos Ghosn The Last Flight among its credits.

French born writer-director Bannier has been based in England for a decade and will be Creative Director of the new UK drama business. His directing credits include iconic dramas Spiral and Les Beaux Mecs as well as The Tunnel, which is where he first collaborated with Melhli, who was a producer on the Kudos drama. The duo also worked together on Tim Roth-starrer Tin Star.

Melhli worked at Endemol and Altice before teaming with Jacques Arthur Essebag to create Alef One in 2018. She told Deadline that working with Bannier during Covid – and the problem-solving and creative conversations required to keep projects together as production shut down – led to the idea of them working together in a new capacity.

“It was no longer simply ‘you are a writer, and I am a producer,’ it was more about how can we make things happen, because it was so difficult when everything stopped, there was an energy between us.”

Bannier picked up the thread: “We were sharing a very strong common vision and we thought it could find a way to express itself in London and beyond… and in English language drama.”

The first Alef UK project out of the gate will be a TV adaptation of Iain Levison thriller Mind Reader, which it has optioned. Levison has a curious back story as a Scottish American writer who is, currently, best-known in France where his work makes bestseller lists.

Jonathan Wakeham, who penned the screenplay for Shailene Woodly movie To Catch A Killer and upcoming Brian Epstein biopic Midas Man, is writing the script for Mind Reader. The story follows a cop and a death row prisoner who can both read people’s minds. The novel is set in the U.S. but the six-part series is expected to move some of the action to the UK.

As a small indie, Alef UK will structure its projects as coproductions and bring in other partners. Bannier and Melhli said what interests them is drama that speaks to the modern world, and that could encompass technology, immigration, or other issues we face in contemporary society. There is an open-minded approach to how this vision will be realized. “We can do any story, we won’t restrict ourselves by subject or genre – we will do comedy, we’ll do thrillers, we’ll do action,” Melhli said.

As a director, Bannier said relocating to the UK ten years ago showed him another way of working: “When I arrived here it was so challenging, but also so exciting, the way directors in the UK work with producers, with commissioners,” he said. “I had to incorporate a new way of doing my job, which was not simply directing and forgetting everyone else, because here it’s such a team effort.”

As an indie boss he has a slate of about six projects and is recruiting an exec to work on development who will join soon. “What’s at the core of the relationship between Alef UK and the mothership, which is the Paris office, is my constant conversation with Nora,” he said. “She overviews my projects, but she leaves me with full independence, which is wonderful, it gives me wings.”