Fox takes two with ‘The Cleaning Lady’ & ‘Monarch’ series orders

The Cleaning Lady

Fox has commissioned two new scripted drama productions, with straight-to-series orders for both crime series The Cleaning Lady and music drama Monarch.

The Cleaning Lady is an adaptation of the original Argentinean series and is being produced by Warner Bros. Television and Fox Entertainment, with Shay Mitchell’s Amore & Vita Productions.

The hour-long drama is written by Miranda Kwok (The 100) and showrun by Melissa Carter (Queen Sugar), both of whom will executive produce alongside Mitchell, Rose Marie Vega and Paola Suarez. Homeland director Michael Offer will also exec produce and directed the pilot.

The series stars Elodie Yung (Daredevil) as Thony, a whip-smart doctor who comes to the US for a medical treatment to save her ailing son. But when the system fails and pushes her into hiding, she refuses to be beaten down and marginalized. Instead, she becomes a cleaning lady for the mob and starts playing the game by her own rules.

Monarch, meanwhile, is a one-hour country music drama (fka Untitled Country Music Dynasty drama), created and written by Melissa London Hilfers and produced by Fox Entertainment, with The Jackal Group and Sandbox Entertainment.

The series marks the first live-action scripted series fully owned by Fox, since the sale of 20th Television to Disney.

Michael Rauch will serve as showrunner and executive produce alongside Hilfers, The Jackal Group’s Gail Berman and Hend Baghdady and Sandbox’s Jason Owen.

The multigenerational drama follows America’s first family of country music – the Romans – who, while their name is synonymous with honesty, the very foundation of their success is a lie.

When their reign as country royalty is put in jeopardy, Nicky Roman, the heir to the crown, already battling an industry stacked against her, will stop at nothing to protect her family’s legacy.

The cast is still to be announced.

Fox has meanwhile passed on two other pilots, Melissa Leo-fronted crime drama Blood Relative and The Goonies-inspired Film Reenactment Project, with the latter expected to be shopped elsewhere by Warner Bros TV and Amblin TV.