In November 2016, Capital won the best TV movie/mini series award at the 44th International Emmy Awards.
Describing how he became involved with the production, writer Peter Bowker said, "I was already reading Capital when Derek Wax (Executive Producer), who I've worked with before, sent me it. It hadn't occurred to me that it could be adapted because so much of it is people's internal dialogue and thoughts, so I thought the challenge of that would be intriguing. I've admired John Lanchester's writing as an economist so to begin with I was just excited to meet him! Then the more I read the book the more I thought it was similar to Dickens, both in terms of catching a moment of time and how the big decisions filter in to everyday life. If you start with the people at the bottom, who absorb the impact of those decisions, there's something dramatic there. So that's how it started."
The story centres on a fictional Pepys Road in South London (although there are two actual Pepys Roads in South London - namely in Raynes Park and New Cross) and the lives of people with connections to it. Once an ordinary residential area, the value of each house in the street is approaching £2 million. Its residents range from those who were born there to the newly-wealthy who have only recently moved in. They all begin to receive postcards which say "We want what you have". They react to this in different ways.