TELEVISION never gives up. Feed it a new idea and all it wants is more, which has left producers relying more and more on the library for help. Recently, there have been popular adaptations of works by Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, DH Lawrence, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others and if anything the process is speeding up. There are many more adaptations to come, and the best of them look very promising indeed.
The first to go into production is American Gods, an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel about a war between gods, which starts filming in America next month. The good news is it’s being produced by Bryan Fuller, who developed the dark and excellent Hannibal, and Gaiman will also write some of the episodes.
Another great science-fiction novel up for adaptation is Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. Published in 2010, it is set in a dystopian America in which books are irrelevant – except to the hero Lenny Abramov. It is being developed by the comic actor Ben Stiller.
The future gone wrong is also the theme of MaddAddam, which is being made by HBO based on the trilogy of novels by Margaret Attwood. It is science fiction (although Attwood famously bristles at the term) and is set in a future in which genetic mutations are thriving. The books were dark to the point of pitch black, but the man handling the series, Darren Aronofsky, knows what he’s doing – he directed the rather terrifying ballet/horror movie Black Swan.
Something rather more traditional, but even more exciting, is the new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. The first of them, The Talented Mr Ripley, has already been adapted in to a film starring Matt Damon, but that could only begin to explore the sinister, shocking depths of its anti-hero Tom Ripley. The trick of the series, which is being made by Endemol in the US, will be in capturing the novels’ cool, non-judgmental and unsettling tone.
There are several other literary adaptations on the horizon, the first of which is John le Carré’s The Night Manager, which will be broadcast by the BBC in April. The BBC has also commissioned a new version of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, although it has been adapted for so many other mediums already, it’s harder to see the point of that one.
And looking at the list of books that have made it to television (or are about to), it’s hard to avoid thinking about the novels that are crying out to made into TV dramas (but haven’t yet).
The most obvious is the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker, which follows a soldier shattered by the First World War – those are novels that have the epic, ambitious quality that would make a wonderful, long series. But also prime for adaptation is Maria McCann’s 2001 novel As Meat Loves Salt, a scabrous but sexy story set during the English civil war.
I'd love to see any of those adaptations on TV, but only because I loved the original books so much. TV has undoubtedly learned to turn books into wonderful series. But however good they are, they can never be quite as intense, personal or as privately wonderful as the original book.
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