By Francesca Street
It is a truth universally acknowledged that many of British television’s biggest success stories originated as classic novels. 1994’s Andrew Davies’ penned Pride and Prejudice set the benchmark. Over six, emotionally charged Sunday evenings, Jennifer Ehle’s headstrong Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth’s dreamy Mr Darcy fell in love and the public fell head over heels alongside them. The BBC series became a worldwide phenomenon and remains a cultural touchstone today.
Pride and Prejudice’s success can be attributed to Davies’ canny adaptation. Davies remained loyal to the spirit of the novel, but also made changes when he felt they enhanced the success of the adaptation. In this way, Davies concocted the recipe for a hit book adaptation: a potent combination of loyalty and novelty.
Back in 1994, Davies was aided by Pride and Prejudice’s episodic structure, which lends itself perfectly to serialisation. Austen’s plot has all the hallmarks of great television: breaks and rises; climaxes; clear definition between the ‘a’ and ‘b’ plots and the protagonists, played by the romantic leads and the secondary characters, played by the character actors.
In 2016, Davies took on the mammoth task of adapting Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a sprawling, philosophic novel, in which the lives of dozens of characters span 15 years.
Davies may be adapter supreme, but even he confesses to being intimidated by Tolstoy’s epic, which comes in at over 1000 pages and charts the fortunes of five Russian families.
Such an epic novel ought to be impossibly constricted by a six-part serial format, but this Harvey Weinstein-funded series has been praised across the board for striking, Emmy-worthy cinematography; an astute and absorbing script and big-hearted performances.
War and Peace’s success demonstrates how seemingly unfilmable novels can be adapted for the small screen in clever, unexpected and satisfying ways. This adaptation manages to abridge plot without abridging sentiment.
Take Episode Three’s breathtaking ball scene, a series highlight, in which Lily James’ Natasha Rostova and James Norton’s Andrei Bolkonsky fall in love after only one dance. The scene is a triumph of romance: speechless, but astonishingly beautiful. The intensity of the dance, the potency of the gazes, the hypnotic music and the splendour of Catherine Palace in St Petersburg allow the filmmakers to condense pages of explanation and dialogue into just a few minutes of footage, after which the audience are utterly invested in and utterly convinced by Natasha and Andrei’s romance.
Television adaptation should concentrate on evoking the feelings and emotions that characterise the spirit of the novel. This should be triumphed over extreme fidelity to plot.
Last year’s great book-to-television success was Poldark, an ongoing adaptation of Winston Graham’s generation-spanning novels of the same name. Adapter Debbie Horsfield condensed the first two novels into one absorbing, six-part series. This compression of plot and character focused concentration onto the main characters of Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) and his maid-turned-wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson). This was a clever and appropriate focus : Ross and Demelza are the heart and soul of Poldark and it is their relationship that will hook the viewer in.
When War and Peace leaves our TV screens, it will be replaced by another big-budget BBC One adaptation. This time, it is John le Carré’s Cold War thriller The Night Manager getting the television treatment. Multiple Emmy nominee Hugh Laurie (House) and Tom Hiddleston of Avengers fame will star in the six-part series. Le Carré’s novels are equally as hefty, and as detailed, as Tolstoy. Time will tell if the adaptation manages to follow Davies’ magic formula and embellish and abridge to ensure success, whilst remaining loyal to the novel’s core.
The finale of War and Peace takes place on 7 February on BBC One.
The Night Manager begins in February 2016
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