Douglas Henshall to play Sean Langan in BBC Four single drama Hotel Taliban

Douglas Henshall (South Riding, The Silence) will play award-winning journalist, Sean Langan, who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Taliban in 2008, in BBC Four’s gripping and intense single drama, Hotel Taliban, co-written by Norman Hull and Sean Langan.

Currently in production for transmission in 2012, Hotel Taliban will dramatise the events as told in Sean’s diaries, as well as Sean’s testimony to the film producers in which he described the ordeal he and his interpreter Sami went through during their three-and-a-half months in captivity.

In early 2008, documentary filmmaker Sean Langan was ready for his next assignment – to gain access to the Taliban training camps in the tribal areas of Pakistan, despite being a no-go zone for foreign journalists. After months negotiating access to key Taliban leaders via his fixer, Sami, Sean crossed the border into Pakistan. But things didn’t go to plan. Kidnapped and accused of being a spy, Sean and Sami were held hostage for three-and-a-half months, awaiting their fate – death or release. During his captivity, Sean’s survival instinct found him befriending the family holding him hostage, and from a difficult and dangerous situation, Sean discovered a central common humanity, as well as bizarre moments of cultural misunderstanding.

Richard Klein, Controller, BBC Four, says: "It’s a mad, mad, mad world - that's the sentiment I got when Sean Langan told me of his astonishing three-and-a-half month kidnapping by the Taliban. Not just terrifying, though it truly was, but also absurd, moving and funny: Sean's story is really a story of our times, how a journalist obsessed with getting his story finds himself instead locked in a game of words with captors who have as far removed a view of the Western world as Martians. And yet what Sean discovered was that these people were in many ways just like him. Hotel Taliban tells a gripping, terrifying and thrilling story that has a happy ending, thank goodness.”

Key cast also include: Jimi Mistry (Strike Back, East Is East) as Sami; Ramon Tikaram (EastEnders, This Life) as Mr C; Kate Ashfield (Diary Of Anne Frank, Collision; Line Of Duty) as Anabel Langan; Matthew Marsh (Hidden) as Kane; and Andreas Karras will play Gul Jan.

A Garden Production for BBC Four, Hotel Taliban is co-written by Norman Hull and Sean Langan. The director is Norman Hull. The producer is Flavia Taylor; and the executive producers are Stephen Wright and Jamie Laurenson for the BBC and Magnus Temple for Garden.

Hotel Taliban was commissioned by Richard Klein, Controller, BBC Four and Ben Stephenson, Controller, BBC Drama Commissioning.
Source: BBC
Also reported by The Stage and ATV Today