The Cuckoo's Calling: First look at TV adaptation of JK Rowling's crime novels

Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger star in the eagerly-awaited drama

Crime magic: Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike and Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott in the first pictures from filming the new series in London

Steffan Hill/McAinsh/PA

John Dunne @jhdunne14 November 2016

A new small-screen detective and his sidekick hit the streets of London in the first pictures from the TV adaptation of J K Rowling’s crime novels.

War And Peace actor Tom Burke, 35, stars as private eye Cormoran Strike and Holliday Grainger, 28, as his assistant, Robin Ellacott, in the hotly anticipated BBC1 series.

The cast began shooting the crime drama on Sunday in central London.

Images from the first day of filming show the British stars in character, with Strike, hands in his coat pockets, walking around London and Strike and Ellacott standing outside his favourite pub, The Tottenham.

Rowling, 51, wrote the Strike series under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

The Cuckoo’s Calling was the first book in the series, published in 2013, and with two further books the series has sold more than four million copies.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is being adapted into three hour-long episodes and is expected to be broadcast next year.