David Baddiel and Peter Bradshaw have put Hunting Alice Bell on Channel 4 at 9pm. Fran, a suburban mum working at a leisure centre, becomes the focus after a video she makes for her work website goes viral for the wrong reasons.
Alexandra Roach as Fran
Alexandra Roach plays Fran, the woman at the centre of the drama’s mistaken identity plot. The setup turns a routine piece of workplace content into the trigger for a wider public pile-on, with trolls deciding she is Alice Bell.
Alice Bell is described as a former nurse who helped her anaesthetist serial killer boyfriend, Jason, before resuming life with a new identity. Simon Pegg appears as Jason, giving the series a named villain around whom the whole story can turn.
Peter Bradshaw and David Baddiel
The pair created the drama together, with Bradshaw also identified as ’s chief film critic. That matters because the series is built around online misidentification, a premise that does not need a large production trick to feel current; the setup does the work.
The source description goes further by placing the story in an AI world, where the line between one identity and another can be blurred fast. Hollie Richardson calls it "it’s a nightmare that, in this AI world, never feels too far-fetched".
One identity, more than one target
Fran learns she is not the only woman being forced to deny she is Bell. That complication shifts the drama from a single case of mistaken identity to a wider problem: if more than one woman is being named, the pressure is no longer just personal, it is systemic.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple. Hunting Alice Bell is not being treated as a distant premise or a slow-burn project; it is the Channel 4 drama on at 9pm, and the story is built to be watched in the moment it airs rather than discovered later through clips and recaps.
