Ben Miller to star in new crime drama Professor T

en Miller is set to star in a new ITV crime drama titled \'Professor T\'.

The former \'Death in Paradise\' star will front the new six-part crime drama series, which is based on the hit Belgian series of the same name.

Ben will star as the titular Professor Jasper Tempest, an OCD criminologist, and will be joined in the cast by Frances de la Tour, who will play his colourful but overbearing mother, Adelaide.

Other members of the cast include Emma Norris, who will play Detective Inspector Lisa Donckers, while Barney White has been cast as her police sidekick Dan Winters.

Speaking about the series, CEO of production company Eagle Eye Drama, Walter Iuzzolino said in a statement: "Professor T is my all-time favourite detective - a tortured genius wrestling with a mystery childhood trauma.

"It\'s a unique crime series with a core of wonderful warm characters at its heart and I am delighted to be working with our hand-picked European production team to make this for ITV and international audiences."

The show will be helmed by leading Belgian director, Indra Siera, and will be filmed in Belgium and Cambridge in the summer.

For Ben, the role comes after he was the first actor to play the lead role in BBC crime drama \'Death in Paradise\', where he played Detective Richard Poole.

Ben held the role - which saw his character solve the murders on the Caribbean Island of Guadeloupe - between 2011 and 2014, before he departed and a new detective named Humphrey Goodman (played by Kris Marshall) took over the important position.

Kris left the show in 2017, and Ardal O\'Hanlon was cast instead until 2019, with new star Ralf Little taking over the lead role for the 2020 series, which finished airing last month.