Ben Miller as Professor Jasper Tempest. Photo: ITV

Based on the hit Belgian series of the same name, Professor T has begun filming on location in Belgium and Cambridge. Starring Death in Paradise’s Ben Miller ((Death in Paradise, Worst Week of My Life) as criminology professor Jasper Tempest – an “eccentric but brilliant” academic, suffering with OCD and has a tortured past. Frances de la Tour (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Vicious) stars alongside Miller as his colorful but overbearing mother, Adelaide.

Unfortunately, possessing a brilliant mind has its drawbacks as Professor T also has several neurological disorders which make him complex and often difficult, with a very unpredictable nature. Tempest finds himself reluctantly acting as an advisor to the Antwerp Homicide Department when Diana Tyson (Elizabeth Kate Back) is violently attacked on Cambridge campus. Together with DI Lisa Donckers (The Trial of Christine Keeler’s Emma Naomi), a former student of Tempest’s, the pair compare the assault to a similar one that occurred years beforehand and attempt to track down the criminal at large.

The current series, in Flemish with English subtitles, stars the greatness of Koen De Bouw as the eccentric criminal psychology Jasper Teerlinck, aka Professor T, .airs on a number of PBS stations in America (including PBS Passport) as part of the Walter Presents series which is a curated collection of award-winning international drama, hand-picked by Walter Iuzzolino, a TV connoisseur who travels the globe looking for the next The Killing. Each series is presented in their original languages with English subtitles.

Discussing the new ITV crime drama, Walter sounded pretty charged up about the newest incarnation of the original. “Professor T is my all-time favorite detective – a tortured genius wrestling with a mystery childhood trauma. It’s a unique crime series with a core of wonderful warm characters at its heart and I am delighted to be working with our hand-picked European production team to make this for ITV and international audiences.”

The ITV remake won’t be the first outside of Belgium, however. Professor T has been remade in Germany where the crime-drama series is set in Cologne and is about an eccentric professor at Cologne University while in France, Professor T stars Mathieu Bisson.  The British Professor T will be helmed by leading Belgian director, Indra Siera, and will also star Barney White (Taboo), Andy Gathergood (The Salisbury Poisoning), Sarah Woodward (Quiz), Ben Onwukwe (Marcella), Douglas Reith (Downton Abbey) and Juliet Aubrey (Van der Valk).

Professor T will air on ITV and PBS, hopefully, in 2021 but, more likely, 2022. Stay tuned for a lengthy Tellyspotting interview with Walter Iuzzolino next week!!!