ITV’s Joan ends after one season despite high viewership figures

Series depicting notorious jewel thief Joan Hannington’s life garnered four million viewers per episode

ITV’s hit drama Joan has been cancelled after one season due to the show’s star-studded cast being unavailable to film further episodes.

The biopic series, which tells the story of real-life jewel thief Joan Hannington, stars Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner as the titular character and Frank Dillane as her fellow thief and antiques dealer, Boisie.

Speaking to The Sun, an ITV spokesperson said the channel would “love” to produce another series of Joan but “as a consequence of cast availability”, a second series “isn’t possible”.

Hannington became Britain’s most notorious diamond thief, stealing millions of pounds’ worth of jewels during her almost 20-year crime spree (her haul from that first day alone was worth £800,000).

“I would say in the morning: ‘Let’s go to New York!’ By lunchtime, we would be sitting in first-class seats, sipping champagne, with £20,000 of cash lining our pockets,” she has said.

ITV’s six-part series about Hannington’s life aired last autumn and garnered over four million viewers per episode.

The programme ended on a cliffhanger, with Joan vowing revenge on her former ally Albie (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) after spending four years in prison for armed robbery.

Sophie Turner as jewel thief Joan Hannington ‘Joan’ (ITV)

At the time the series aired, its director Richard Laxton said there was “definitely potential” for Hannington’s story to continue on-screen.

The news comes as the series’ star, Sophie Turner, is set to play Lara Croft in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s forthcoming Tomb Raider Amazon series.

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She will also appear in director Goran Dukic’s sci-fi Cloud One, alongside Boyd Holbrook and Natasha Kermani’s Gothic horror film The Dreadful, alongside her Game of Thrones co-star Kit Harrington.

Last year, The Independent's Jessie Thompson awarded Joan three stars and dubbed the drama “about as thrilling as a stroll round H Samuel”.

She wrote: “For all its Eighties tunes, wigs and diamonds, ITV’s new drama about jewel thief Joan Hannington is middle-of-the-road, unable to move its anti-heroine beyond ‘victim’ and ‘girl boss’ templates.”