John Simm has signed up for a new Channel 4 drama to be shot over the course of five years.

7 Days, from acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom (The Road To Guantanamo), is a fictionalised story of a UK prison inmate and his relationship with his family in the outside world over a period of five years.

"I wanted to make a film that showed the relationships within a family growing and changing over a long period of time," explained Winterbottom. "Rather than compress the time period or resort to using technical ways of showing ageing and time passing, I wanted to take a group of actors and work with them in a real time scale, giving an authenticity and depth to their performances."

Filming will begin this year and the piece will be shown on Channel 4 in 2012.