Hollywood stars Rupert Everett and John Turturro are to star in the first television adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, its producers said on Wednesday. The big-budget, eight-part series drawn from the Italian author's best-selling murder mystery set in the Middle Ages will be screened next year, said Orange Content, the production end of the French telecommunication giant.

Italian-American Tuturro will play the Franciscan monk William of Baskerville, who witnesses a series of macabre murders at a remote monastery in the Italian Alps. British-born Everett, of My Best Friend's Wedding fame, will play his old enemy, an inquisitor sent from Rome to track the Pope's critics, who has Baskerville in his sights.