Keeper Pictures acquires TV rights to RTÉ's Finding Samantha true-crime podcast series

Keeper Pictures, the Dublin-based film and TV drama production company whose credits include The Gone, Extra Ordinary, Striking Out and Love & Friendship has optioned the exclusive TV adaptation rights to RTÉ Documentary On One’s true-crime podcast series Finding Samantha.

Under the deal, brokered by Edel Edwards, head of sales at RTÉ Programme Sales, Keeper Pictures will adapt the hit podcast into an eight-episode drama series. UK screenwriter, playwright and novelist Emilia di Girolamo (Three Pines, The Tunnel: Vengeance, Law & Order UK) has been signed to the project as showrunner.

Finding Samantha documents the stranger-than-fiction story of Australian con artist Samantha Azzopardi, who has created more than 100 false identities since she embarked upon her career of fraud and deception as a 14-year-old girl in Brisbane. The gripping seven-part series has been one of RTÉ Documentary On One’s most successful ever podcasts, drawing in millions of listeners from more than 100 countries. Since its release in May 2023, Finding Samantha has hit the number-one spot on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify in Ireland. In an unprecedented first for an RTÉ podcast, it also featured in the top five in the Apple Podcast charts in both Australia and New Zealand.

Both the podcast and forthcoming TV adaptation start in 2013, when a distressed 14-year girl was picked up outside the General Post Office in Dublin city centre. Swiftly nicknamed ‘The GPO Girl’ by the media, the teenager appeared to be too traumatised to speak. She was duly taken to a children’s hospital by the Garda, who assumed that she was a victim of child trafficking. However, after an intense month-long investigation into her identity produced no leads, the police released a photograph of the mute teenager. That resulted in an astonishing call from the other side of the world, which revealed that The GPO Girl was, in fact, a 25-year-old Australian called Samantha Azzopardi, a sophisticated serial con woman — and a psychological enigma.

Emilia di Girolamo’s credits include a string of successful true-crime adaptations. She wrote and executive produced Deceit for Channel 4 in the UK, based on the controversial honeytrap at the heart of the investigation into the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell. She was also head writer and showrunner on The Tunnel: Vengeance for SKY and Law & Order UK for ITV/NBC. Most recently, she created, wrote and showran Amazon Prime Video’s critically acclaimed Montreal-based detective series Three Pines, starring Alfred Molina.

Emilia di Girolamo said “I’m thrilled to partner with Keeper Pictures and the brilliant RTÉ Documentary On One journalists to bring this extraordinary story to screen. Samantha Azzopardi embodies a new breed of 'emotional con woman’ trading in attention and sympathy and her story sits perfectly within our cultural fascination with complex female criminals. Like the podcast, the drama is a psychological excavation that explores the driving forces behind her compulsive deceptions, as well as the damage she inflicted on her many vulnerable victims. The series also delves into the cat-and-mouse games Samantha played with the podcast team, creating a multi-layered narrative that’s as much about the pursuit of truth as it is about deception itself”.

Yvonne Donohoe, creative director and producer at Keeper Pictures said: “Alongside listeners from around the world, we at Keeper Pictures were captivated not only by Samantha Azzopardi’s story but also the nuanced and balanced way this podcast, and these journalists in particular, interpret, understand and tell this knotty, fascinating, intense, emotional and thrilling true crime story. We are delighted to have secured the screen rights for the podcast and to be collaborating with a brilliant showrunner who shares our passion for this story but also wants to treat the material with sensitivity and integrity as we bring this story to life in an ambitious, engrossing, water-cooler limited TV drama series.”

Edel Edwards, head of programme sales at RTÉ Programme Sales, said: “In the last couple of years, there’s been a flood of interest in our Doc On One podcast series, as producers have realised they represent a rich source of untold true-crime stories. Finding Samantha totally fits that description and with the brilliant Emilia in charge of migrating the extraordinary and vulnerable story of Samantha Azzopardi from podcast to screen, we have no doubt that it will make for irresistible viewing. Keeper Pictures’ track record in brilliant drama and crucially, the ability to tell a story without sensationalism and with utmost respect means it is in the best hands.’