Phoebe Dynevor, who played Daphne Bridgerton in hit Netflix series Bridgerton is to star in and executive produce a new Amazon Studios series based on the novel Exciting Times by Irish author Naoise Dolan.

According to Deadline, Dynevor will play the role of main protagonist Ava in the upcoming series, while there is currently no confirmation on who is to play the roles of banker Julian and lawyer Edith, Ava’s love interests.

Irish author Naoise Dolan, pictured above, will write and executive produce alongside director Cooper Raiff. The production is backed by Black Bear Pictures which optioned the rights to the book before its US release in June 2020.

The narrative of Dolan’s Exciting Times follows Ava, a 22-year-old Irish woman who moves to Hong Kong from Ireland after graduating from university. She begins work as an English teacher and it is here that her obsession with words and language comes to the fore. She considers the meaning (and double meaning) behind every word which is why her relationships appear to become strained at times when she considers too closely what each piece of correspondence means. “We discussed whether the word ‘quite’ magnified or diminished a compliment.”

Exciting Times is an inward-facing story in that a lot of the narrative centres on theories that hatch in our protagonist’s mind rather than in reality. For every sentence she actually says, there are ten more circling her brain. This is most notable as she drafts and deletes text responses on her phone throughout the story, particularly to Julian and Edith, but also to keep up appearances to her mother back in Ireland. “Mam texted asking how I was. I typed: i am very unhappy. Autofill offered three different negative emojis. I tapped one and it replaced the word ‘unhappy’ with a sad face. Then I deleted the draft and sent one saying I was grand.”

It will be interesting to see how this focus on words and language plays out on screen.

While there is currently no set release date, Dyvenor took to Instagram Stories this morning to share the news about the new Amazon Studios project while Dolan shared posts on her Instagram and Twitter pages.

Read our review of Exciting Times here.