Netflix will make a fantasy crime series set during the French Revolution, with the creator of the guillotine investigating a "blue blood" virus raging through the aristocracy, the US company said Wednesday.
The as yet untitled French-language show is a tongue-in-cheek alternative take on one of history's greatest upheavals, it said.
"What if they have been lying to us for two centuries?" the producers said of the show's premise.
"The illness spreading through the aristocracy pushes the nobles to attack the people and that is the beginning of a revolt."
The hero of the piece is Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the French doctor and freemason who first came up with the idea of the blood-chilling device which would be used to chop off so many noble heads.
Guillotin - who was actually against the death penalty - saw the guillotine as a more humane method of execution.
His family subsequently changed their name to avoid any association with the grisly contraption.
Erik Barmack of Netflix said they were keen to bring the eight-episode show - set in 1787 and due to be shot next year - to international audiences.
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