Octavia is an upcoming ITV

ITV

ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...

 adaptation of Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper OBE is an English author. She started her career as a journalist and wrote numerous works of non-fiction before writing several romance novels, the first of which appeared in 1975. She is most famous for writing the Rutshire Chronicles.-Early life:Jilly Sallitt was born in Hornchurch,...

's novel of the same name. The screenplay has been written by Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey (playwright)

Jonathan Harvey is a British playwright whose work has earned multiple awards. He is also a former secondary school English teacher.-Life and works:...

. Octavia is set in Britain during the 1970s.

Production began on 17 September 2007, in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. Despite this, as of Spring 2009, it is yet to be shown. According to a Broadcast Now article, this is because, as a consequence of the recession, ITV have put many of their dramas 'on ice'. The Guardian reported that Octavia does not have a transmission slot for 2009.

Jilly Cooper is due to make a cameo appearance as a guest at a party.

Cast

• Tamsin Egerton
  Tamsin Egerton
  Tamsin Egerton is an English actress best known for her roles as Chelsea Parker in the 2007 film St Trinian's, Holly Goodfellow in Keeping Mum and Guinevere in the 2011 TV series Camelot.-Career:...
  
   as Octavia Brennan
• Patrick Baladi
  Patrick Baladi
  Patrick Baladi was born on 25 December 1971 and is an English actor.Baladi was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England. His father is a gynaecologist from Libya, and his mother was a midwife...
  
   as Jeremy West
• Richard Coyle
  Richard Coyle
  Richard Coyle is an English actor.-Early life:Coyle was born in Sheffield, England to Irish parents. He began his acting career after a stint working on a ferry entertaining passengers, where he was told by a theatre director that he had a talent and should pursue it further...
  
   as Gareth Llewellyn
• Tom McKay as Xander Brennan
• Alice Glover as Lorna Hamilton
• Joel Fry as Charlie Mancini

Plot summary

Octavia Brennan is a beautiful yet flawed young woman, living the high life in 1970s London. Though she is deeply flirtatious and has, by her own admission, slept with many men, she has never found happiness with any of them.

After bumping into an old school friend, Gussie, and falling for her fiancé, Jeremy, Octavia is invited to spend the weekend with them on their canal boat. Characteristically, she convinces herself that Jeremy cannot possibly have real affection for the overweight and clumsy Gussie, and she is determined to win Jeremy by the end of the weekend. But when Jeremy invites Welsh firebrand Gareth Llewllyn along for the ride, Octavia finds her plans disrupted in more ways than one.

Octavia is one of six romances Jilly Cooper wrote early on in her career, before she found wider success with the Rutshire Chronicles

Rutshire Chronicles

The Rutshire Chronicles is the name given to a series of romantic novels by Jilly Cooper. The stories tell tales of mainly British upper-class families, as well as the show-jumping and polo crowd, in numerous different sexually charged scenarios, often laced with adultery, illegitimate children,...

. The others are Bella, Harriet, Imogen, Prudence and Emily.