ZDF Enterprises and the U.K.-based Parsonage Productions are developing a new drama, “The Bronte Girls,” a fictional account of the last summer which the three Bronte sisters spent together.

The drama is based on the stage play of the same name by New York-based playwright Caroline Franklin (“Last Night at the Carmine”). Franklin will adapt the drama for the small screen with the British writer-director Darcia Martin (“Riches,” “Shakespeare & Hathaway,”Call the Midwife”).

The initial series, structured as a six-part drama, will be executive produced by Harvey Myman, Patty Lenahan Ishimoto and Patrick Irwin, who first worked together on Masterpiece/PBS U..K. period crime drama, “Miss Scarlet & The Duke.”

“The Bronte Girls” is set in the village of Haworth, Yorkshire, where Reverend Bronte’s three daughters, Charlotte (19), Emily (17) and 15-year-old Anne spent their last summer together as teenagers. Theirs was not a prim and proper youth, “The Bronte Girls” imagines, painting a portrait which anticipates something of the passion of the sisters’ subsequent novels, which were to become literary sensations.

“With hormones raging, romances leading to sexual tension, political conflicts and guarded secrets, the sisters’ lives are anything but chaste in this fictionalized drama of three extraordinary women and the men, young and old, who are caught up in this adventure,” ZDFE announced Tuesday.

“Generations have been fascinated by the Brontes so when the producers presented us with this project about one of the literary world’s most famous families, it immediately grabbed my interest,” said Yi Qiao, director ZDFE.drama, who brokered the deal for ZDF Enterprises.

“‘The Bronte Girls’ is an exciting production that has all the right ingredients to entertain international audiences,” she added.

“Caroline’s play intrigued us right from the start. The idea of reimagining the lives of the Bronte sisters on the cusp of womanhood was just too good to resist. We’re delighted to be partnering with ZDF Enterprises, Caroline and Darcia to bring this story to life for the small screen,” said Lenahan Ishimoto. (John Hopewell)

What led me to my current role: I started to draw when I was 3 — and I drew on my parents’ beautiful white walls at home. They didn’t blame me, so I’ve kept drawing. My dad is a writer, so we had many books at home, too. I loved reading classics like “Pride and Prejudice,” “Jane Eyre” and “Frankenstein,” and when I was touched by the stories, I created illustrations. So I’ve always connected drawing with stories.

For much of the film, she is obsessed with “Jane Eyre,” connecting it to her own life. She gets angry that Cathy and Heathcliff are “so committed to their misery.” (Erin Evans)

“Eros, honored without reservation and obeyed unconditionally, becomes a demon,” warns C. S. Lewis, “mercilessly chaining together two mutual tormentors, each raw all over with the poison of hate-in-love.” Writing in 1960, he voices his worry that the dangers of eros have come to be underappreciated: “Read Anna Karenina, and do not fancy that such things happen only in Russia.” Not only in Russia, and not only in the nineteenth century. In Virgil on Dido, Goethe on Werther, Flaubert on Emma Bovary, Proust on Swann, and Brontë on Heathcliff, we have tales of love as a sickness of the soul. (Agnes Callard)