Beyond the Roundels

(I still have space for more topics if anyone hasn't left me one yet! The original post is here should you wish to.)

ramasi requested: Book-to-movie (or tv) adaptations you like? (Or didn't like, if you feel like ranting).

My first thought was that this was a very nice question, the second that this could be a very long post if I'm not careful. So I made myself choose 5 favourites, setting myself a rough guideline for inclusion - something along the lines of "it needs to be something I've watched at least twice and should be where I read the book first". (And then promptly broke that rule with my first choice, as you do.) (The pics in this post, btw, are my screencaps, excepting those for the first two, which I stole from Google.)


1. Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House (BBC, 1984)



This was a BBC children's TV adaptation of Rumer Godden's The Dolls' House, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, who made a lot of stop-motion animation, including Bagpuss and The Clangers. I didn't read the book until after I'd watched this, but it was one of the first books I bought for myself via the Puffin Book Club, and the TV show is very faithful. It also defies description. It's made in exactly the same sort of style as Bagpuss, so pitched in a way that's both deliberately old-fashioned and younger than the intended audience, but with dark undertones. It would have been one of the first children's shows I saw that killed off a main character (very traumatic and memorable for a small thing!) and the dolls' inability to move or express themselves to humans other than via wishing is not portrayed as this cute fantasy where your toys have a life of their own, but more about how frightening this can be for the dolls. I felt the dark undertones at the time; it was a big part of the appeal, but I can put names to those things now: powerlessness, lack of ability to communicate, and abuse. I had a very happy childhood, but the wishing thing resonated with me hugely because as a child I never really understood that I could ask for things I wanted, to the point where when I was 5 I spoke so little in class my teacher had my parents go and check in case I was deaf, because she was concerned about me. But it was just that so much of my world was internal. I was watching and thinking about things, that was all. And wishing.

It also taught me the meaning of the words marchpane, celluloid, flammable, farthing, and samplers. Especially Marchpane (which means evil killer china doll an old-fashioned version of marzipan) and flammable.

Which is pretty impressive for a twee little stop-motion animation about dolls for young children all cosily narrated by Peter Firmin. And even though it's been a long time since I've seen more than this episode on YouTube, it would probably win for the book adaptation that I've loved most at any point in my life.





2. Pride & Prejudice (BBC 1995)



From something obscure to the obvious choice... but, I mean, it is, isn't it? All other P&P adaptations and most other Austen adaptations, previous and later, must bow down before it. This is clearly, in my opinion, because it has the most perfect Mr Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow) who will ever be, but the rest of the cast are pretty great too. I loved watching it at the time - and I had just started uni and had to go to the dreaded Cwrt Mawr Common Room to watch it - and I've got an awful lot of pleasure rewatching it over the years, on TV, on VHS and now on DVD. I have enjoyed some of the other P&Ps, don't get me wrong, but they had inferior Mr Bennets, what can you do?



3. North & South (BBC 2004)



BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South (with Daniella Denby-Ashe, Richard Armitage, Sinead Cusack, Tim Piggott-Smith, Brendan Coyle & Anna Maxwell Martin), which might well be my current Favourite Adaptation Ever. It follows Margaret Hale, who has to move from a comfortable life in a southern village to a northern manufacturing town called Milton (a fictionalised Manchester) and explores the culture shock and mutual misunderstandings that involves with the Milton people, especially the working class Higginses and the Thorntons, who own a big cotton mill.

It was on a smaller scale than some of the other BBC efforts from around the same time and it tried to do something a little different with the genre, but also the scriptwriter has done lovely work in adapting the novel - Gaskell can be really rather Victorian (understandably) - without losing the essential heart of it, or the relationships other than the love-hate romance between the two leads. (Margaret and her father, her mother, Dixon; the Hales & the Higginses; Nicholas & Thornton; Thornton and his mother). It's a lovely cast, beautifully shot, and I adore Martin Phipps's score. Plus, it introduced me and most of the nation rather dramatically to Richard Armitage, which I think most people'll agree is a good thing. It is still an Elizabeth Gaskell thing, though: expect a high body count and come armed with tissues.







4. I Capture The Castle (2003)



Adaptation of Dodie Smith's coming of age novel I Capture the Castle, set in the 1930s and narrated (via her journal) by 17 year old Cassandra, who lives with her fairly eccentric family in a semi-ruined castle somewhere in Suffolk. With Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Rose Byrne, Tara Fitzgerald, Sinead Cusack, Henry Thomas & Marc Blucas.

I kind of have issues with this one (because unlike the book, it doesn't manage to hold onto its sense of humour in the last third and it tries to be a bit too modern/conventional in dealing with Mortmain) but I love it regardless, because of all the things about the book (which I love even more) that it does get right. Every time I read the book I have to go and watch the film, and every time I see the film, I have to read the book. And given that Cassandra is described early on in the book as "a bit too consciously naive", who better to play her than a young Romola Garai? The cast's pretty great all round, and they still keep lots of the distinctive narration from the book.









5. The Way We Live Now (BBC 2001)



The Way We Live Now an Anthony Trollope adaptation about politics, love, railway fraud, scandal and bankruptcy in the fast-moving, modern world of the 1870s, scripted by Andrew Davies and starring David Suchet, Cillian Murphy, Matthew Macfadyen, Paloma Baeza, and Shirley Henderson. This is pretty energetic and cynical, and it was where I met Matthew Macfadyen (who is really entertaining in it as the useless and caddish Felix Carbury), and that was one of the reasons why I was curious about Spooks. He wasn't so funny in that, but it was still a good viewing choice, & one for which I am grateful.




And that's leaving out Poldark, the 1970s Musketeer films, and the BBC Miss Marple, even. Choices are tough.