David Tennant, once the star of the BBC mega-hit series ‘Doctor Who’, has been cast as the lead in a Polish-British-French spy drama.

The two-part television drama, Spies of Warsaw, is based on the novel of the same name by best-selling American author Alan Furst, and is being co-produced by BBC Worldwide, Polish public broadcaster TVP and ARTE France.

The drama begins in pre-WW II Warsaw, with the threat of war looming over the continent.

“We have big ambitions for Spies of Warsaw and for making it the beginning of a run of adaptations of Alan Furst’s novels,” Ben Donald, Executive Producer for International Drama at BBC Worldwide, says in a press release.

“With the story taking place in Poland, France and Germany the adaptation offers some really interesting casting opportunities,” he added.

David Tennant, who rose to stardom in the UK as Doctor Who, a long-running drama on BBC television, will play Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, an attache at the French Embassy in Warsaw who runs a network of spies.

Janet Montgomery, whose credits include the 2010 movie Black Swan, will play Anna, the love interest in the story.

Directing duties will be taken be Coky Giedroyc, the daughter of a Polish nobleman who emigrated to Britain in 1947.

Giedroyc was nominated for a British Film Academy Award for her 2007 drama The Virgin Queen, and she shot the pilot episode of BBC hit drama Sherlock. (nh/pg)