A private space race, a missing biologist and a marriage pushed to breaking point: who will bring Claire home?
On 23/04/2026 ITV and Mammoth Screen announced First Woman, a new six-part drama that combines intimate domestic stakes with the tension of the modern space race. The series centres on Ben Reith (played by Ashley Walters) and his wife Claire (played by Andrea Riseborough), an astronaut assigned to the UK’s inaugural lunar base.
The premise pivots on a single, urgent mystery: Claire disappears during the onset of the long lunar night, leaving an orbiting programme, a shaken ground team and a nation demanding answers.
The story opens with Ben waking in London to discover Claire missing, and that fact becoming a global headline because she is the first woman to set foot on the moon as part of a groundbreaking research mission.
Claire is a trained biologist whose work has scientific, political and public resonance; her absence casts suspicion both on her crewmates and on a rival base operated by China. Alternating between Mission Control back on Earth and scenes on the lunar surface, the series becomes a tense, procedural race against time as Ben seeks to unravel what really happened.
Creative team and production
First Woman was created by Lydia Yeoman and George Oakes from an original idea and features scripts written by Yeoman, Oakes and Ben Schiffer. Direction comes from Emmy and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Philip Martin, while production is led by Julia Stannard for independent producer Mammoth Screen. The project is a co-production with Alcon Television Group and ZDF Germany, and it is co-financed by Alcon and ITV Studios. ITV’s drama chief Polly Hill commissioned the series, citing its scale and originality as reasons to back the ambitious project.
Casting and creative intent
The casting of Andrea Riseborough and Ashley Walters anchors the drama in two complex performances: Riseborough, an Academy Award nominee, portrays Claire with a quiet scientific authority, while Walters, an Emmy-nominated actor, plays Ben as a man suddenly thrust into a public and private crisis. Both performers have spoken about the project’s emotional scope and its imaginative reach: Riseborough has described a lifelong fascination with space, and Walters has praised the chance to work on a show that invites conversation and fresh perspectives on intimate relationships under extraordinary pressure.
Filming, visual effects and location
Production is underway in Belfast with support from Northern Ireland Screen, and the team is using Studio Ulster, the largest virtual production facility in the UK, to craft the lunar landscapes and the moonbase interiors. UNIT VFX has been brought in to deliver the onscreen effects in close collaboration with the producers, while POLI PRODUCTIONS and designer Gillian Devenney work with director Philip Martin to realise the scale of the series. These tools allow the show to balance intimate character moments with cinematic vistas of the lunar surface, all while maintaining a grounded, human focus.
Scale, tone and storytelling
The series positions itself as both a thriller and a study of relationships: at its heart is the question of how well two people know one another when separated by hundreds of thousands of miles. The script purposely toggles between the claustrophobia of the moonbase and the procedural intensity of mission control, creating a propulsive narrative that is at once an emotional rollercoaster and a geopolitical suspense story. Expect pacing that leans into uncertainty, with revelations that complicate loyalties and expand the stakes beyond a single missing person.
What audiences can expect
First Woman aims to be among ITV’s most ambitious contemporary dramas, offering an original take on the intersection of family, science and media spectacle. Produced in association with and to be distributed internationally by ITV Studios, the show promises to engage both viewers looking for character-driven storytelling and those drawn to high-concept, visually rich television. With its international co-producers and advanced virtual production techniques, the series seeks a global audience while keeping its focus on the intimate human story at its centre: a husband searching for his wife and the secrets that surface as a result.
