Ο Benedict Cumberbatch will star in the television version of the classic thriller «The 39 Steps».

The mini-series is signed by Mark L. Smith, writer of the film by Alejandro Gonzalez Inirritu «The Revenant» (The Return), but more recently, the film by George Clooney «Midnight Sky», and director Edward Berger, who has worked with Cumberbatch on the Patrick Melrose series.

The series, which will be released directly to streaming, is based on the novel of the same name by British author John Buchan, brought to the cinema in 1935 by the master Alfred Hitchcock (the year in which the author became the fifteenth Governor-General of Canada, a position he held until his death in 1940).

«The 39 Steps», one of the most influential «chase» novels of all time (in Greek from Minoas), is the story of Canadian Richard Hannay, an ordinary man accused of the murder of an unknown woman lying dead in his apartment - who, before she died, first mentioned the mysterious «39 Steps» to him.

The police consider him a prime suspect in the murder and launch a manhunt, and he takes the train to Scotland, trying to find the «mastermind» of the spy conspiracy he has unknowingly found himself involved in.