Les Misérables adaptation
Stacey MacNaught |
BBC One recently announced that a six-part adaptation of Victor Hugo's popular Les Misérables will soon be hitting screens, as six one hour programmes on television. Headed up by popular film Bridget Jones screenwriter Andrew Davies, the team will adapt Hugo's original book for a modern audience, alongside the team that produced the series War and Peace. With the story of revolution familiar to many as the musical version, this is thought to appeal to the historical, period and documentary audiences to broaden its appeal.
The familiar musical version offers a fragmentary outline of the book's full story, which the adaptation will set to resolve. It will aim to do justice to Victor Hugo's book by creating an alternative masterpiece for the BBC new audiences. It has been revealed that the six hour drama will be executive produced by Lookout Point and Harvery Weinstein for Weinstein Television, however any casting information and broadcast dates for the series are yet to be announced.
Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's hit musical of Les Misérables has been running on the West End in London since 1985, and in 2012 it was made into a film starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. The appeal is vast, with both home and tourist audiences enjoying the long-running show. In the mainstream film, the A list cast broadened its reach even further as even more people became familiar with the story and the musical simultaneously.
For many, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is one of the greatest novels of all time, so will be eager to see the television adaptation and how true to the story it can be. For others, it is the musical that is one of their all-time favourites, so equally will be keen to view the story for television, anticipating that it will be completely different.