Matthew Beard

A beguiling murder mystery with a solution that will both astonish and shock viewers, the plot of Magpie Murders revolves around the character Susan Ryeland, an editor who is given an unfinished manuscript of author Alan Conway's latest novel, but has little idea it will change her life.

Max Liebermann, a student of Sigmund Freud, helps Detective Rheinhardt in the investigation of a series of disturbing murders around the grand cafes and opera houses of 1900s Vienna.

It tells the story of Leila, a lonely 17 year old girl addicted to a fictional online gaming site called Agora. While playing on the platform, Leila meets Tess, a cool and confident party girl who harbours a dark secret. In the real world, the two girls become friends, but after Tess disappears Leila decides to assume her friend's identity and in doing so is quickly drawn into unravelling the mystery behind her disappearance. The series will combine live action with computer-generated virtual world sequences to create the parallel worlds of Leila and Tess' real life and that of their online alter egos 'Shadowfax' and 'Mania' in the virtual world of Agora.

Thandie Newton plays the morally conflicted undercover cop Grace, whose son was killed in a drive-by shooting.