When it comes to books, there’s one phrase guaranteed to depress. (Well, maybe there are two.) Whether said as an apology, boast or sidestep, “I’ve no time to read” crops up whenever books are mentioned. (And it only ever applies to books – when have you ever heard anyone say they don’t have time for TV or music?)
After a Christmas of Oliver Twist and The Old Curiosity Shop, the BBC has lined up Little Dorrit as its latest adaptation. Expect the “Bleak House treatment”: a smattering of stars, soap-like scheduling and enough swooshing camerawork to leave viewers of a delicate disposition suffering from whiplash. All this and an Andrew Lloyd Webber-helmed search for kids to star in a new production of the musical Oliver! to tide you over until next Christmas’s cinematic outing of A Christmas Carol. Is anyone else getting Dickens fatigue?
Elsewhere, Jane Austen still reigns. After her back catalogue was exhausted by last year’s ITV season, a new spin is required. ITV offers us Lost in Austen about a modern reader who (feminists, read on with caution) “longs for a man who can spark the fires that lie within”. And lo, she is transported into the pages of Pride and Prejudice. The BBC, meanwhile, has created a drama about Austen’s own life (especially her romances), Miss Austen Regrets, a conceit recently explored in the BBC-backed Becoming Jane.
Indeed, it’s cinema that seems to be stealing all the good books. Despite their classic status as TV series, both Middlemarch and Brideshead Revisited are going to Hollywood, much like Joe “Atonement” Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (though the BBC got their own back here by unnecessarily re-making Sense and Sensibility).
Even what is original seems curiously familiar. Cranford was trumpeted as something new, but it’s actually the third Elizabeth Gaskell novel the BBC have brought to life in recent years. The most unique thing about it is that adaptor supremo Andrew Davies was nowhere to be seen (perhaps too busy with Fanny Hill and A Room With A View). While current Sunday night success Lark Rise to Candleford is less well-known, its genteel humour, strong female cast and surplus of bonnets surely induces feelings of déjà vu.
If television’s collected works of Austen is well thumbed, there are reasons. Drama is expensive, especially period pieces, so risks are to be avoided. With their wealth of characters and episodic structures, Austen and Dickens lend themselves to multi-part programmes, and they’re also hugely exportable, especially to America, where they are lapped up by Anglophiles when shown on PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre.
However this greatest hits and cover versions approach to adapting English literature leaves other writers and books languishing. Isn’t there a crime writer worth thinking about other than Agatha Christie (there’s been around 30 Marple or Poirot adaptations since 2000)? And what of the other great Victorian writers – Wilkie Collins or Samuel Butler, perhaps? Or 20th-century novelists like Jean Rhys or Angela Carter? Even international authors or, whisper it, a book from this century?
Still, the BBC may be a step ahead. Announcing their new production of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the publicity material says Thomas Hardy is arguably “the most neglected of our great literary authors”. Quite right too; it’s been three years since his work was last shown on television.
Cinema and food has a complex relationship. There’s the gastronomic pleasures of Chocolat and the vitalisation of wine in Sideways, but personally when I think of film and food I remember the less pleasant scenes. The cooked lover in The Cook, The Thief…, the live squid eaten in Korean shocker Oldboy, the boy forced to eat an entire chocolate cake in Matilda …
Restaurants are often given a bad name. Quite literally in the case of Marylebone’s vegetarian Eat and Two Veg. With a name to make even a provincial barber groan, ETV (I refuse to type it again) rather undermines the meat-free diner’s attempts at contemporary style. It would seem good food does not equal good taste.
Of course, it’s not just vegetarians eateries but all specialist or niche restaurants which seem especially prone to the pun. Could you stomach the Mussel Inn, Thai’d Up or Mad Mex? And could a love affair with falafel survive a meal at Syriandipity?
