History developing Vikings creator's bubonic plague drama and a Donner Party limited series

Variety

Vikings creator Michael Hirst will serve as executive producer on The Plague Year from writer Coleman Herbert. According to Variety, "the series is described as a portrait of 1665 London, during one of the all-time worst outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague. As Londoners of all stripes flee in droves, those who remain in the city, whether by choice or by fate, find their resolves tested and old wounds reopened, as they are faced with an impossible question: how do you keep going when everything around you has fallen to pieces?" Documentarian Ric Burns will write The Donner Party, based on one of history's most infamous tragedies. "Setting out for California in the spring of 1846, James Reed, his family, and a hopeful wagon train of migrants were drawn by the promise of a better life out west,' per Variety. "Little did they know that their ill-fated expedition, doomed to be trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the winter, would face unimaginable hardships that brought out the best, and worst, in humanity."