British actress Michelle Ryan has beaten out competition from some of Hollywood's leading ladies to land the title role in a TV update of 1970s television show The Bionic Woman. The original show starred Lindsay Wagner and ran from 1976 to 1978. It was a spin-off from the Lee Majors-starring The Six Million Dollar Man.

22-year-old Ryan, best known in her native UK as Zoe Slater in BBC soap Eastenders, has signed up to play Jamie Sommers, a professional tennis player who suffers a skydiving accident before being transformed into The Bionic Woman.

The new NBC program will be a "re-imagination" of the original series.