Sky has announced that its highly anticipated five-part Sky Original documentary series Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie will air on June 20.
The documentary series will examine the brutal murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier in West Cork in 1996.
The documentary, which is produced, directed and features on-air contributions from six-time Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In The Name of The Father), will be released in full as a box set with all episodes available to watch on Sky Crime and on streaming service NOW.
The series is set to premiere on Sky Crime on Sunday, June 20.
For anyone who's unaware of the 1996 case, two days before Christmas, Sophie, the wife of French filmmaker Daniel Toscan du Plantier, was brutally murdered at her holiday cottage in Schull, West Cork.
The murder rocked the Irish town and 25 years later, the case remains a mystery.
The key suspect, English journalist Ian Bailey – the first reporter on the scene – was quickly arrested by local gardai following eye-witness reports, yet was never found guilty in Ireland, owing to a lack of reliable evidence.
Despite this, Bailey was found guilty in absentia by the French courts in 2019 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Having successfully fought repeated extradition requests from the French authorities, Bailey still resides in West Cork and maintains his innocence to this day.
Having worked on the project for almost a decade and followed the case over the past 25 years, director Sheridan will take viewers on a journey as he pieces together original evidence, never-before-seen footage, archive material and new interviews with those closest to the case.
Speaking about the documentary, Sheridan said: “As a filmmaker, many stories fascinate me, but this story compels me. In 1996, Sophie - a young mother, a wife, a film producer and a daughter – died just yards from her holiday home in West Cork. To this day, the case remains unsolved in Ireland, while the key suspect has been found guilty in France."
He adds: "As a guest of the nation, Sophie’s murder continues to carry implications for the meaning of justice in Ireland and in France. Two legal systems and two investigations by the French and the Irish found two very different conclusions. I wanted to understand how that could happen, to search for justice and to help uncover the truth. I hope this series will help bring about a definitive conclusion to the case.”
