Montreal – Working conditions became downright eerie for Montreal-based screenwriter Matthew Cope after he was commissioned to write the final version of The Flood, an ambitious miniseries that imagines London besieged by water.

Cope, who says he owes the gig to his L.A. agent Charles Lenhoff, has completed the script on the 2 x 2 $25-million mini, which commenced its nine-week shoot in South Africa on Feb. 3. (A subsequent three-week shoot will take place in London.) Cope shares credit with Nick Morley.

The eeriness began four days into Cope’s rewrite, after Hurricane Katrina struck the coastal U.S. ‘You could see that something this severe could happen,’ Cope notes. ‘It wasn’t at all about being opportunistic – there was no way to see Katrina coming, of course – but it certainly made writing the screenplay strange.’

When Cope, who has written for such series as Mystery Hunters and Bob and Margaret, was first approached about putting the final dialogue and plot points in place for the sprawling mini, he confesses to being skeptical.

‘When I first heard of the plot, I didn’t think it was feasible,’ he recalls. ‘But then I read the research package, and in fact, London is very vulnerable. It would take a perfect storm of sorts, but a surge of water into London and the levee system that the city has would probably not hold. With a population of over seven million, casualties would be far worse than what we saw in New Orleans.’

Cope says that the screenplay he completed steers clear of the most famous Hollywood cycle of disaster movies – the ones that producer Irwin Allen perfected in the ’70s, including (the recently remade) The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. ‘This is much more fact-based,’ Cope says. ‘It’s far more rooted in reality.’

A U.K./South African/Canadian copro, The Flood is produced by Justin Bodle (Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion) and Peter McAleese (Bridget Jones’s Diary), and directed by Tony Mitchell (Supervolcano). The cast is an impressive line-up of British talent, including Robert Carlyle, Tom Courtenay, Joanne Whalley and David Suchet. Montreal-born Jessalyn Gilsig (Boston Public) rounds out the cast, and Montreal’s Muse Entertainment Productions will be providing copro support services.

The Flood will be broadcast on Britain’s ITV late this year.