The BBC has released the first pictures from “Troy: Fall of a City,” the upcoming swords and sandals epic it is making with Netflix.

Filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, the series stars David Threlfall (main image), in a very different guise from Frank Gallagher of “Shameless,” as well as Frances O’Connor (“The Missing”) and David Gyasi (“Interstellar”).

In the series Gyasi plays Achilles (above). David Farr (“The Night Manager”) penned the eight-part series, which BBC drama boss Piers Wenger said “will be like nothing broadcast before: a 3,000-year-old tale crafted on a huge scale.”

The story is told from the perspective of the Trojan royal family at the heart of the siege. Endemol Shine-backed producers Wild Mercury and Kudos are producing. The BBC will launch the series in the U.K. and Netflix internationally.

There was also a first look (below) at Louis Hunter and Bella Dayne as Paris and Helen, the lovers whose affair plunges Greece and Troy into war and threatens to bring both empires to their knees.