Danish Drama From Clyde Phillips Gets Straight-to-Series Order at AMC (Exclusive)

As Clyde Phillips prepares to say farewell to Showtime’s Nurse Jackie with the series finale on Sunday, he’s already lined up his next gig.

The showrunner behind Dexter and the Edie Falco comedy has landed a straight-to-series 10-episode order at AMC for a remake of Danish drama series Bankerot titled Broke, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Based on the Danish series created by Kim Fupz Aakeson and produced by DR Broadcasting, Broke revolves around two best friends who take one last shot at their dream of opening a restaurant together. One is a brilliant chef in trouble with the mob and the law, and the other is the best sommelier in the city who is the widowed father of a teenage son. Broke is a story of friendship, fatherhood, grief, larceny, arson, drugs, adultery, murder, love — and blazingly original cooking.

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The series hails from Lionsgate, where Phillips is under an overall deal, and AMC Studios. Phillips will exec produce alongside original Bankerot producers Henrik Ruben Genz and Malene Blenkov as well as Piv Bernth (The Killing). The series marks the latest Danish adaptation at AMC, following its remake of Forbrydelsen, which became The Killing and ran for three seasons on the cabler before closing out at Netflix.

The deal also keeps AMC in business with Lionsgate after the duo’s successful pairing on critical darling Mad Men and comes as the cable network has put a renewed focus on original scripted programming after largely abandoning its reality slate.

“It’s about damaged people and damaged people are the most interesting to write,” Phillips told THR, noting the series has echoes of both Dexter and Nurse Jackie‘s antiheroes. “It’s about damaged people that we have compassion for and want to invite into our homes. Jackie and Dexter, when I came on to Jackie, I realized they had great similarities between [them] and the audience embraced them. I want to continue writing about damaged people and to find a compassionate way to depict them.”

“Clyde Phillips is a supremely talented creator we’ve known and admired for years,” AMC president Charlie Collier said. “Through his work on Dexter and Nurse Jackie, Clyde has repeatedly demonstrated his skill for crafting complex, flawed, yet irresistible characters, and we’re looking forward to him bringing his continued brilliance to Broke. We’re also so happy to be partnering once again with our good friends at Lionsgate after the extraordinary journey we shared on Mad Men.”

For AMC, Broke joins a scripted roster that also includes The Walking Dead and spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, Halt & Catch Fire, Turn, Badlands, Humans, the final season of Hell on Wheels and limited series The Night Manager. It becomes the network’s latest straight-to-series pickup. On the pilot side, AMC is prepping comics adaptation Preacher as it mulls additional scripts in advance of its next batch of pickups.

Phillips is repped by CAA.

Email: Lesley.Goldberg@THR.com
Twitter: @Snoodit