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True Blood's Anna Camp and Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser are making their television comeback in a miniseries about the Mayflower's historic journey.



National Geographic Channel's "four-hour movie event" will tell the story of two distinct groups who escaped England aboard a ship bound for the shores of Plymouth in the New World.

One group seeking religious freedom - called the saints - is led by William Bradford (Kartheiser) and his wife Dorothy (Camp), and also includes Ron Livingston (Band of Brothers) as Pilgrims leader John Carver and Barry Sloane (Revenge) as the diplomat Edward Winslow.

A second faction – led by traveller Stephen Hopkins (Rome's Ray Stevenson) – are a group of strangers seeking fortune rather than religious liberty.

Hopkins's pregnant wife (Natascha McElhone of Californication) and the agitator John Billington (Mildred Pierce's Brían F. O'Byrne) are among the other strangers.

Both of these factions will come into contact with Native Americans once they reach North America's shores – and those interactions will shape the first Thanksgiving and subsequently the entirety of US history.

National Geographic channel president Tim Pastore said in a statement that he is "incredibly excited" to bring the story of the colonists to television.