Graham Norton's bestselling novel Forever Home is being adapted into a six-part drama for Channel 5, with Shetland's Douglas Henshall and Downton Abbey's Amy Nuttall in the lead roles. The series centres on Carol Crottie, a divorced teacher whose new relationship with older widower Robert unravels as his declining health and fixation on a hidden basement in their shared home raise unsettling questions about his past. It matters as a notable expansion of Norton's literary career into scripted television, bringing his darker fiction to a mainstream broadcast audience.

The plot draws on the two-decade-old disappearance of Robert's first wife, Joan, who allegedly ran off with his brother, leaving her children behind. As Robert's dementia worsens, his anxiety about the house intensifies, prompting Carol and her mother, Moira, to dig into his history. The ensemble cast includes Denise Welch, Kevin Whately, Samantha Bond and Lewis Cope, and the show aims to balance dark, unsettling drama with the wry humour present in Norton's original novel.