Gideon's Daughter

Gideon's Daughter is the second of two linked BBC television dramas written & directed by Stephen Poliakoff.

Produced independently for the BBC by Talkback Thames and starring Bill Nighy, Miranda Richardson, and Emily Blunt, it aired in the UK on BBC One on 26 February 2006 and in the US on BBC America a month later. It was shown across Australia on ABC1 on 2 November 2008. The first of the dramas, Friends and Crocodiles, had been broadcast the previous month, with the character of Sneath (Robert Lindsay) appearing in both and acting as the narrator of Gideon's Daughter. The Mini series was watched by 10.2 million viewers.

Nighy and Blunt received Golden Globe Awards for their performances. The production won a Peabody Award in April 2007.

Story

Exploring themes of love, loss, parenthood, and the cult of celebrity, Gideon's Daughter is set against the backdrop of New Labour's rise to power, the death of Princess Diana, and the ill-advised development of the Millennium Dome. Gideon is a hotshot publicist and a widower, driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown by his daughter Natasha's emotional detachment from him. She resents him for repeatedly cheating on her mother, going so far as to call his mistress as her mother lay dying of cancer. To put distance between them, she at first plans to do volunteer work in South America or (her father's preferred choice) to study at the University of Edinburgh.