Michaela Coel making new BBC drama returning to the world of I May Destroy You

Michaela Coel is creating a new show for the BBC which is expected to reprise characters from her acclaimed drama, I May Destroy You.

Created by Coel, the 2020 series following her character Arabella as she tries to rebuild her life after being raped, received eight Bafta nominations.

Despite offers from global streaming giants for a second season, Coel will stick with the BBC.

Piers Wenger, BBC director of drama, confirmed a new project with the writer, actress and director.

He said: “I want to let the fans know that there is a new show coming along. It’s truly in Michaela’s head and not for me to second-guess (the story), it’s in relatively early stages.”

Wenger suggested “elements” of I May Destroy You could feature once again. “There was a relationship between Chewing Gum (Coel’s E4 debut) and I May Destroy You. There’s a through-line in Michaela’s thinking. I suspect there may be elements (that reappear) too.”

However, Wenger answered “no comment” at an event unveiling a new slate of commissions when asked if the BBC’s biggest hit, Line of Duty, will return for a seventh series.

The executive cited the police corruption drama as an example of why the BBC would not follow Netflix by always allowing viewers to binge-watch a whole series on the iPlayer. “What if the fun of knowing who H was is completely ruined by a person on a bus who had it on a phone and showed their mate?”

New BBC dramas giving a voice to breakthrough female writers include Champion, the first TV project from Candice Carty-Williams, the award-winning writer of bestseller novel, Queenie. Set in the world of south London grime rap, it tells the story of a competitive sibling relationship.

Cash Carraway, a former Soho stripper-turned-writer, will adapt her book Skint Estate, a “wild and punky tale of being trapped below the poverty line and doing everything it takes to escape”. Daisy May Cooper (This Country) stars as a young working-class single mum living with her 10-year-old daughter in the “brutal lonely landscape of austerity Britain”.

Carraway said her central character was “immoral and shocking and purposefully vile, and swaggerous and quite amazing really. It’s not poverty porn.”

The writer of the Bafta-winning British film Rocks, Theresa Ikoko, will adapt her soon-to-be published novel, Wahala.

Journalist Dolly Alderton adapts her memoirs, Everything I Know About Love, described as an “uplifting Sex and The City for millennials which covers bad dates and squalid flat-shares”.

Call The Midwife will stay on BBC One despite attempts by Netflix, impressed by its huge ratings, to poach the period drama and give it a bigger budget.

Wenger said even though the producers had “much more lucrative offers”, they understood the value of the “trusted relationship with the audience” offered by a Sunday night prime-time slot on BBC One.

Although competition from streamers with deep pockets is straining the BBC’s drama resources, Wenger said the broadcaster had a unique ability to develop “offbeat” and “left-field” ideas, such Peaky Blinders, and turn those British stories into national, then global, long-running hits.