ITV have confirmed it will show a live performance of the classic musical The Sound of Music on Christmas Day this year.
The Sound of Music Live! will be the dramatisation of the legendary musical and will last two-and-a-half hours. The cast has also been revealed, with Kara Tointon playing Maria and Julian Ovenden playing Captain Georg von Trapp.
It will also feature Alexander Armstrong and Katherine Kelly and is to be directed by Richard Valentine.
Speaking about the ambitious show, ITV’s director of entertainment and comedy Elaine Bedell said:
“This is the first time in the UK that this type of project has been attempted – a musical drama both performed and broadcast live – but big ambitious live television events is what ITV does well.
“We’ve assembled some of the very best talent both in front of and behind the camera, and I can’t wait to see it all come together.”
Over the past two years, TV stations in the UK have become familiar with screening live dramas, mostly in the form of soap operas. In the US, NBC successfully screened The Sound of Music Live! themselves, pulling in nearly 20million viewers.
The Sound of Music
For those not familiar with it, The Sound of Music show is based on the original movie from 1965 with the same name. It was actually a Broadway production several years before then, too.
It’s a heart-warming and musically-led story about the Von Trapp Family singers from pre-Second World War Austria. The lead, Maria, becomes a governess in the home of a widowed navy captain and his seven children.
She introduces great happiness in to the house through music.