TV blog Feed

Don’t be sad - Poldark will return! Here’s the writer on what you can expect in series two

2015-04-23T08:30:36+00:00

I don't think any of us in the production team were prepared for the way Poldark has continued to generate a buzz across social media and in the press throughout its entire run. It's always great to be talked about but this has gone beyond what any of us ever imagined!

The fact that Poldark has been mentioned in connection with anything and everything from the general election...

This external content is available at its source: Why am I only finding out now there's a petition to have #Poldark run in the General election?

to manscaping...

This external content is available at its source: Ah, yes. Monday seems made for media coverage on manscaping. 'Where has #Poldark's chest hair gone?'

hair products...

This external content is available at its source: Tbh I would marry Poldark purely for the hair products, it's doing his curls wonders

toy figures...

This external content is available at its source: A topless Playmobil version of Rodd Poldark bathing in the sea

and scything as a fitness regime...

This external content is available at its source: #Poldark starts a fitness craze. Is 'scything' the next big workout craze?

Poldark seems to be everywhere.

The cast and characters seem to have captured the public's imagination - and we've no complaints about that!

In series two, several exciting new key characters will appear, and there will continue to be turmoil and strife in Ross' business ventures and plenty of challenges to his and Demelza's domestic and family harmony. Across the series there will be catastrophic losses, significant triumphs, and some major shocks.

Ross will again be involved in several activities which work up a sweat. Scything - an integral part of 18th century farming - may be one of them!

The good news is you don’t have to imagine what might happen to Ross and Demelza between now and series two: Winston Graham is very clear about what happens in the interim.

Since series two is based on his books Jeremy Poldark and Warleggan, the key narrative incidents and characters will be similar to those covered in these works.

So those of you who want to be surprised can just tune in for episode one of series two when it returns, and those who can't wait just need to read the beginning of the third book, Jeremy Poldark, and all will be revealed!

Debbie Horsfield is writer and executive producer of Poldark for BBC One.

The final episode of Poldark, series one will be broadcast on Sunday 26 April at 9pm on BBC One and will be available in BBC iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast on TV.

More on Poldark

Aidan Turner: Five things I learned filming Poldark
Are you Team Elizabeth or Demelza?
Read Debbie Horsfield's blog on BBC Writersroom

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

The Review Show: Interviewing Ian McEwan

2012-08-24T11:00:49+00:00

Ian McEwan is famous, but it is the mark of someone who treats fame as a by-product of his immense talent and who is comfortable in his skin that when we met for The Review Show interview there was no palaver, no entourage, no demands.

We set up our cameras in the wonderfully shabby, once elegant, University Women's Club in London in the wooden panelled library where a hardback copy of Lisa Appignanesi's Mad Bad and Sad, an examination of women's mental illness across two centuries, had been casually left on a chair.

The crew closed the shutters against the noise of the street, set up the lights and positioned the chairs. We would be ready for Ian McEwan.

Ian McEwan: "Novels are bound to be imperfect; they're all too human"

He had an hour and we wanted to make the most of it with a long interview and some readings from his latest novel Sweet Tooth.

The book's publication coincided with the Edinburgh International Book Festival and he, and we, were delighted it was to be launched there.

It has given The Review Show an opportunity to interview him ahead of the day and make a special programme about the man whom I think is one of our most thought provoking authors.

(I still think about the opening scene in Enduring Love and the horror in Black Dogs.)

But just as a character in one of his books might slip into a room unobserved and get the measure of the room and its inhabitants, Ian McEwan arrived early and casually and (at least so it appeared) looking forward to the conversation.

I think this is no mean feat for an author who must have notched up hundreds of interviews.

The joy of such an encounter is the preparation as well as the execution.

The day before I sat with my Review Show colleagues discussing his work and giving my and their thoughts a loose-ish structure.

Sweet Tooth is set in the Cold War era of the early 70s and is, up to a point, a spy novel.

Ian McEwan has written novels set in several different decades, so he said he always knew he would mine the decade of his early 20s.

It is a first person narrative in the voice of Serena Frome, who finds herself working in the lower echelons - well the bottom really - of MI5 after her graduation from Cambridge.

She is recruited for a propaganda project to fund young authors who it is deemed might write fiction favourable to the West. Of course the writers have no idea about the identity of their benefactor.

Serena falls for one recruit, Tom Haley a young Sussex graduate making his way with short stories.

Early in the interview Ian McEwan volunteers that Haley is in fact a sort of distorted autobiographical character and of course - his slender frame, the clothes, the music, the period - all falls into place.

This is funny as so many authors rail against the idea which they regard as reductive, that they are writing about themselves.

Actually there are several very humorous aspects to Sweet Tooth and you'll see in Friday's programme that Ian McEwan tells some very funny stories about his writing - not least that he has compiled a lecture about all the mistakes in his novels.

It takes an author who knows he's good, very good, serious and thoughtful, not to take himself too seriously and, as in the clip above, to be candid about his vulnerability as a writer.

Kirsty Wark is the presenter of The Review Show.

The Review Show is on Friday, 24 August at 11pm on BBC Two. For further programme times, please see the episode guide.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Women In Love: Adapting DH Lawrence's famous novels

2011-03-24T12:03:55+00:00

This is what I call squeaky bum time. A few days to go before transmission of the first instalment of my two-part version of DH Lawrence's Women In Love.

Some press coverage has started to emerge and plenty more will be lined up behind it. Not to mention the opinions of numerous academics and Lawrence experts the world over.

Squeaky bum? This is full on fear.

It's always like this as a production nears its airing, but my emotions around Women In Love seem particularly raw.

I think it's partly the time it's taken to write - a tad over six years by my reckoning - and partly the fact that it's my first adaptation, so I feel I need to be nervous for both me and dear old Bertie.

Above all, though, I'm anxious because I'm as proud of this production as I am of anything I've ever written. And I want people to engage with it.

Not because of a terrible and unedifying need for attention either (though clearly that is there) but because I want people to go back to DH Lawrence and read his books again.

And to do that, I need the audience to watch these films and realise that Lawrence is so much more than his popular image, which is of a man who was obsessed with sex and anti-women and... and that's about it really.

Because, the truth is, he's a brilliant writer who tackled many complex issues, who put women at the very core of so much of what he wrote, and who examined sex in detail.

Not because he was Dirty Bertie, as he has been dubbed, but precisely because he wanted to get away from the prurient arched-eyebrow approach to sex and the human body which so characterised (does it still?) the tutting English.

For Lawrence, all life should be an attempt to live outside the mind and the consciousness. He wanted people to find a way to transcend, to be truly free.

He suspected that death and the orgasm were the two occasions when this happened. So, naturally, much of his work focuses in on these two themes.

But it is not the sum total of his output. Far from it. And I hope you'll watch these two films and realise that is true.

One final thing, though. Don't sit there with a tattered copy of The Rainbow or Women In Love in front of you.

Everything which is in the books is in my films. But it's in there differently.

William Ivory is the screenwriter of Women In Love.

Women In Love is on BBC Four at 9pm on Thursday, 24 March. For further programme times, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

Listen to William Ivory discuss adapting Women In Love on Radio 4's Front Row.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

I'm one of The Culture Show's best new British novelists

2011-03-07T11:50:10+00:00

The last week has been strange. People have been coming up to me in the small bookshop I work in, looking me in the eye, and saying, "Are you Evie Wyld?"

My first impulse is to lie, say something like, "No, she left ages ago, she was no good." Or, gangster-style, "Who wants to know?"

But, after a bit of panicking, I've eventually nodded.

This is partly because I'm a grown-up and admitting who you are is all part of that.

But it's mainly because, very kindly, Roz, the owner, has a pile of my book at the counter with a sign saying, "Look it's Evie, she works here," with an arrow pointing towards me.

I feel any attempt to lie would be temporary at best.

The reason this has been happening is that I've been chosen as one of the BBC Culture Show's 12 most promising British novelists.

When we met for a photo shoot, the writers I spoke to agreed it's lovely, if a little odd, to be appearing on television.

Most novelists are generally happiest on their own, writing rather than talking.

However, of course, having spent three years writing something, it's wonderful to have people who know what they're talking about say it's worth reading.

I'm especially glad that people have said such complimentary things about the handling of landscape in the book, as that strange, fierce countryside of Australia was something I really wanted to explore.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is how I managed to write in the voice of a man.

It was great, therefore, to find that someone else on the list, Rebecca Hunt, wrote hers as a dog - a male dog.

When I was first thinking about how I might do justice to a story about war and silence, I would always imagine what my Australian uncle, who fought in Vietnam, might think about it. Knowing that he approved was a huge relief.

Having those customers in the shop punch the air and say congratulations is too.

Evie Wyld is one of the authors featured in New Novelists: 12 Of The Best From The Culture Show.

New Novelists: 12 Of The Best From The Culture Show is available in iPlayer until Saturday, 12 March, and is part of Books On The BBC 2011.

Alex Clark, part of the judging panel for New Novelists: 12 Of The Best From The Culture Show, has also written on the BBC TV blog about her experiences on the programme.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Judging Britain's 12 best new novelists for The Culture Show

2011-03-04T10:04:19+00:00

The wizards at The Culture Show are a kindly bunch; they know that reading novels en masse is a task made all the more pleasurable if it can be done in warm weather and preferably in a deckchair.

So last August, when I took delivery of my first batch of books to judge for the New Novelists: 12 Of The Best from The Culture Show, I was particularly delighted to be able to head for the garden, turn off my phone and start reading.

In all, there were 57 debut novels under consideration, and we read them in various combinations.

There were 24 books in my first tranche, and I couldn't wait to begin them. I've judged several literary prizes, including The Man Booker Prize, and that first moment - when you don't have a clue what you're about to discover - is always thrilling; but all the more so when the books are by first-time authors.

You won't have read any of the writer's previous books, because there are none; and you can't be influenced, however unconsciously, by reputation or author interviews or book reviews.

And there's always the thought that you might be about to get your first taste of a truly great writer of the future.

After that initial period of reading, the judging panel had two lengthy meetings and an awful lot of email exchanges in between, before we finally got to our dozen writers.

The idea was not to find an overall winner but to establish a list of the brightest new literary fiction talent, at the same time as revealing the process of how such book lists come to fruition.

Those eligible for this new British writers' shortlist had to have written and published their debut novel in the UK within the last two years.

So with these criteria in mind the publishing houses were approached and asked to submit one author each, although additional writers put forward were also considered.

The chair, John Mullan, journalist and critic Sam Leith, author Helen Oyeyemi, Culture Show editor Janet Lee and I then whittled down the entries to the 12 we considered most outstanding.

It's safe to say we didn't always agree, but that's exactly the point of having a panel - fiction isn't something you can judge by rigid criteria, and a novel that elicited exactly the same response from every reader would be a bland creation indeed.

But I think what we were all impressed by was the range of work on offer - from comic flights of fantasy to tender love stories, from sharply imagined historical fiction to acute observations of contemporary life.

I'm very pleased with our final selection, but it's by no means the last word on brand new fiction - and I'm sure you can add plenty of your own favourites.

Alex Clark is part of the judging panel for New Novelists: 12 Of The Best From The Culture Show.

New Novelists: 12 Of The Best From The Culture Show is on BBC Two at 9pm on Saturday, 5 March, (World Book Night) as part of the Books On The BBC 2011.

Immediately before the programme on BBC Two are two Culture Show specials: A Million Books For Free at 7.30pm, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon and The Books We Really Read at 8pm, presented by Sue Perkins.

Evie Wyld, one of the 12 novelists selected for the programme, also also written for the BBC TV blog on her experience of being filmed for the show.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

South Riding and one of the greatest literary heroines

2011-02-18T10:07:24+00:00

When, as a voracious teenage reader, I first read South Riding I took many of its themes for granted and thought it was a great story folded around a great love story.

But re-reading it when I was wondering whether to develop it as a drama, I found the resonances go so much deeper.

I am the controller of series and serials for BBC Drama production and, just occasionally, I get the chance to help push a passion onto the screen.

As the title suggests, South Riding is a portrait of a community.

But, as Andrew Davies has so brilliantly realised in this three-hour adaptation, this is a community into which blows one of the greatest literary heroines ever created.

Sarah Burton, superbly played by Anna Maxwell Martin, is as real a character as ever lived: modern, quixotic, romantic, intelligent, infuriating, elegant, colourful and as wrong as often as she is right.

She bursts into the story - and onto the screen - like the "little firecracker" the older, wiser Mrs Beddows describes her as.

Having lost her fiancé in the First World War she has turned her back on the past to become a teacher, throwing herself into the cause of female education.

Full of hope, she thinks she has it all worked out, but life has other plans and she finds herself sideswiped by love - love for a man who ironically cannot escape his own past, and it is this love that almost undoes her.

The great novelist and journalist Winifred Holtby wrote the novel in 1934 and died in 1935, only for it to be published in 1936 and become a huge success.

Often novelists write about the recent past but Winifred - maybe seeing her world with an intensity born of the fact her health was failing - set this novel right slap in her present.

Yet she still managed to give it an epic sweep and a tone that is hopeful, determined, campaigning and optimistic.

When I read it as a girl I connected with the love story but now, just as much, it is the themes that move me.

It is astonishing to be reminded that, when young women are doing so brilliantly at school and at university, only 70 years ago, a proper aspirational education for all girls was a novelty.

As one of the Holtby family told me at a screening a few weeks ago, Winifred was, at the time, disparagingly referred to as "clever".

She also reminded me that, in the 1920s, "farmers' daughters didn't go to Oxford".

But, as Winifred shows us, female education isn't about feeding the mind of the bluestocking but about making women a relevant, dynamic part of society.

I hope that you find this a thrilling, involving, passionate drama but I also hope it brings you to read Winifred's brave, moving, pioneering novel.

Kate Harwood is controller of series and serials for BBC drama.

South Riding is on BBC One and BBC One HD at 9pm on Sunday, 20 February.

For further programme times, please see the upcoming episodes page.

Watch exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with cast and crew, and a special video on the costumes on the South Riding programme page.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Faulks On Fiction: Exploring classic characters in literature

2011-02-14T11:22:14+00:00

Historically television has tended to focus on the relationship between the author and their work. This has always worked well - think of Bookmark, Arena, and Omnibus - and is a very accessible way into literature.

From the outset, we wanted to do something different and came up with an unusual and original approach: to focus on the characters.

Great literary characters have a life beyond the page. You don't need to have read Wuthering Heights or Robinson Crusoe to know who they are and to care about them.

By looking at these characters we get a better understanding of how our ideas about heroism, love, snobbishness and evil have been shaped.

Faulks On Fiction is an exploration of the connection between characters in the novel and how they are shaped by their times, and how they have shaped us.

By choosing an author to present the series we get a privileged perspective from a real practitioner.

We were very lucky to have Sebastian Faulks on board to front the series - a successful and highly regarded novelist, who has created some memorable characters of his own.

Novels exist mainly in the mind's eye, so how best to illustrate the series?

We took Sebastian to locations that were relevant to each character or their spirit - a desert island called La Selva Beach, Fajardo, Puerto Rico for Robinson Crusoe.

We went to the Yorkshire Moors for Emily Bronte's Heathcliff and to the east end of London for Charles Dickens' Fagin.

And Sebastian talked to others, ranging from other novelists like Monica Ali and Helen Fielding, to poets such as Simon Armitage and philosophers such as Alain de Botton, who were passionate about these fictional characters too.

There were even people who could throw light on a character because they had been in a similar situation, like the former hostage Brian Keenan, who spoke thoughtfully about Robinson Crusoe.

We decided to use both readings and adaptations to illustrate the text.

For many people, adaptations on the small or big screen can be their first encounter with a particular character.

We wanted to harness that by reflecting some of the wonderful characters stored in the BBC's rich archive of dramatisations.

One of the main intentions of making a television programme about novels is not to distract from the act of reading the novel itself but to complement and even encourage it.

The greatest accolade for any programme-maker is to hear that someone has decided to re-read or read for the first time one of these classic texts.

I hope you will go away from Faulks On Fiction inspired to do just that, and that you are encouraged to explore Books On The BBC - a year of books-related programmes across BBC television, radio and online.

Mary Sackville-West is the series producer of Faulks On Fiction.

Faulks On Fiction continues on BBC Two and BBC HD on Saturdays at 9pm and is available in iPlayer until Saturday, 5 March.

For further programme times, please see the upcoming episodes page.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Aurelio Zen: Michael Dibdin's Italian detective on TV

2011-01-07T09:47:46+00:00

Years ago my Dad gave me a Michael Dibdin book and told me to read it. What I most enjoyed about it was the loving detail and description of life in Italy - it's almost as if Italy is a huge character in the novels. I tucked it away in my memory.

The success of the first series of Wallander, made by my independent production company, Left Bank Pictures, made me think about what other 'foreign' detectives there might be around that we could develop.

I liked the form of the 90 minute TV film - it feels special - and I liked the idea of developing a second upmarket detective franchise for the BBC that would sell potentially around the world.

There were a few existing Italian detective franchises that we could have picked on but it was the Michael Dibdin books which most intrigued me.

Dibdin died a few years ago and though he was not Italian, he lived there for years and clearly adored it.

All his stories are loosely based on real stories and he captures remarkable qualities of its culture and customs. We've tried to ensure that our series has similar insights and reflects the reality of life in Italy.

And since the British love Italy for the food, the beautiful scenery, the sense of style, the history of the country and its stories, I checked on the rights to the books.

They were available although there was another company - an Italian one - chasing the agents for them.

We made a quick decision and went for it. But it wasn't a slam dunk. I knew that the books had been 'optioned' several times before - that's when production companies buy the exclusive rights for a specific time period - usually 12-24 months.

If and when the series is successfully made there's a further payment to the author or, in this case, the author's estate. Despite quite a bit of investment in scripts Aurelio Zen had never made it to the screen.

So there was the challenge: to boldly go where others had tried unsuccessfully before. We had to get it right and we had to ensure that we could raise the money to get it right. They were going to be expensive films to make.

It is an ambitious series and it's my job to help create the series, pull the team together and help lay out the blueprint with the main writer.

But perhaps the most important part (along with Marigo Kehoe, Left Bank's managing director) is to raise the money.

We started with the BBC who loved the idea. After they had committed to about 40% of the potential budget, we set out to find the rest.

After several recces in Italy to work out where and how to make the series, we were able to convince three more media companies from Italy, Germany and the US (Mediaset, ZDF and WGBH respectively) to join us in making the programme.

Around the time I was thinking about this show, I went to see the Tom Stoppard play Rock'n'Roll. As soon as I saw Rufus Sewell on stage I knew he was the one to play the lead, Aurelio.

I didn't know him personally but I've always loved his work. He's very handsome, and rather hip, and has great range as an actor.

He also has tremendous warmth and humour and brings these great qualities to the role of Aurelio. He just seemed perfect in every way and his time is now.

Caterina Murino

was our first choice as the female lead Tania and luckily she loved the project and was free to do it. The first director John Alexander, Rufus and I flew to Milan to meet her.

I felt very strongly that we should cast an Italian actress in the role of Tania if we could find the right one. She was it. She is hugely talented, very funny and gorgeous. So that was the casting.

It's always a huge move to decide on a writer for a series and I spent several weeks thinking about this at the start of 2009.

A friend had recommended Simon Burke to me and I knew he was a great adapter of books. What I didn't know was that he had abandoned his life in south London and moved to Umbria with his family.

So Simon shot to the top of my wish list. I rang him and told him of my ambitions. Brilliantly, he saw the same mix of drama and comedy in the books that had excited me.

As soon as I read his first draft of his first script I knew he was the right choice. I loved it and so did Rufus. We were all seeing the same show.

As with the Wallander novels, we've updated them to make a contemporary series. I think there is a real similarity between the writing of Henning Mankell and that of Michael Dibdin.

Just as Mankell's novels tell you a huge amount about life in Sweden, Dibdin's do the same for Italy.

Everyone who reads Dibdin will have an idea of how Zen is - how he looks, reacts etc.

Novels and TV films are very different forms of entertainment and we can't please everyone but I do think that Michael would have been very pleased with the choice of Rufus Sewell as the detective.

Some of the stories have been changed of course, but that's inevitable. Michael Dibdin's wife (novelist K K Beck) was very keen that we keep to the spirit of Michael's work and we have been very keen to do this. I think we've pulled this off.

I met his daughter recently, who is a journalist. She liked the first film very much and I was delighted.

Andy Harries is the executive producer of Zen.

Zen is on BBC One and BBC One HD on Sundays at 9pm. The first episode is available on iPlayer until Sunday, 23 January.

For further programme times, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

Comments made by writers on the TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Toast: The magic and humour in memoirs of my childhood suppers

2010-12-30T09:00:00+00:00

When I started writing Toast it never crossed my mind it might one day become a film, let alone one starring Helena Bonham Carter and Freddie Highmore.

The book had started life as a short story about the food of the 1960s and 1970s for my weekly Observer column, but I soon realised that the food I was writing about was impossible to separate from what was happening in my life at the time.

Whether I was writing about marshmallows or canned fruit, picnics or barley sugars, I couldn't help but tell the story that surrounded them. My short story soon escalated from a catalogue of childhood food into a childhood memoir.

When Alison Owen at Ruby Film and Television first suggested asking Lee Hall to turn my book into a film script I was thrilled, but nervous.

Lee had just enjoyed a huge success with Billy Elliot, but I was unsure about seeing what was an intimate and indeed personal sad story brought vividly to life.

As soon as I read the first draft I relaxed a little. Lee had captured not just the initial sadness of the story of a little boy who loses his mother at Christmas but had captured the humour of the book too.

I felt an immediate bond with the director SJ Clarkson too, partly because she had created or worked on so many of my favourite television programmes from Mistresses to Life On Mars, but also because we shared a vision for the film: neither of us wanted it to end up as a grey and gritty drama.

She immediately recognised the magic of the story, the humour and fairy tale element. I knew at once my story was in safe hands.

It was SJ who first suggested Helena Bonham Carter for the role of my stepmother.

Helena is full of surprises as anyone who has seen her in Fight Club or Enid knows and I was excited at the prospect.

Casting Victoria Hamilton as mum was a little more straightforward. I immediately recognised mum's quiet elegance and gentle nature in her.

The casting continued in this original and spirited manner.

Ken Stott proved to be the perfect reincarnation of my father, and Oscar Kennedy and Freddie Highmore who both play me at different stages of my life, turned out to be an extraordinary piece of déjÃ vu for me, both of them showing the determination and vulnerability I had at that age.

The sexual element of Toast - it is, after all, a coming of age story - was an integral part of the book and I was concerned how it would translate onto the screen.

The film touches on the sexual thread of the book, but in a more subtle way. This may disappoint a few readers who are hoping for a visual romp through the book's more colourful and varied sex scenes but it makes it easier viewing.

The days I spent on set were enjoyable but emotional.

It is one thing to read the last words you ever said to your mother on paper, another thing altogether to hear them being shouted over and over again through headphones.

That said, it is extraordinarily comforting to turn around with tears in your eyes and find everyone else crying with you.

Nigel Slater is the author of Toast.

Toast is on BBC One at 9pm and on BBC HD at 11pm on Thursday, 30 December.

The producer of Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers, Jennifer Fazey, has written a post on the BBC Food blog about how Nigel takes classic recipes and gives them a new twist.

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Nordic Noir: The Story Of Scandinavian Crime Fiction

2010-12-20T09:00:00+00:00

The Stieg Larsson phenomenon was building to a crescendo when we decided the time was ripe to take stock of Scandinavian crime fiction in the documentary that became Nordic Noir.

Why had a region best known for Volvos, Abba and Ikea begun producing dark and violent thrillers filled with brooding detectives and avenging cyberpunks?

To find out, I headed to Norway and Sweden to meet some of the genre's best writers and deep thinkers.

Time - and resources - were tight. BBC Bristol's Time Shift strand has been churning out compelling programmes on a shoestring for nearly 10 years and I had just three days to film eight interviews in three cities.

First stop Oslo, where Norway's hottest property Jo NesbÃ¸ explained how he achieved the unlikely feat of turning the humble snowman into a symbol of bowel-quaking terror.

It was hard not to feel a tinge of envy for a man who'd only turned to crime writing because he was bored with the day job - which involved being the Bono-like front-man of one of Norway's biggest bands.

After a whirlwind filming tour of the city I took a flight to Stockholm where my colleague Naz and I went in search of the twilight world of Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels.

The next morning we talked politics with the urbane HÃ¥kan Nesser, a writer who drily questioned the current of left-wing angst that underpins so much Scandinavian crime writing, before another flight took us to the port of Ystad - Wallander country.

I hadn't expected it to be quite so twee, nor to see a tanned and refreshed Kurt lounging about in deck shoes, smoking a fag - but then actor Krister Henriksson only plays Wallander, despite the similarities he acknowledged in our interview.

The shoot ended, fittingly, with the woman who started it all - Maj SjÃ¶wall.

In the 1960s, she and partner Per WahlÃ¶Ã¶ created a series of politically driven thrillers based around a long suffering detective called Martin Beck - books that would have a profound influence on Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.

"We wanted to change people's way of thinking," she smiled ruefully.

And that is the real story of Nordic Noir.

Robert Murphy is producer of Nordic Noir: The Story Of Scandinavian Crime Fiction.

Nordic Noir: The Story Of Scandinavian Crime Fiction is on BBC Four at 9pm on Monday, 20 December.

The Time Shift strand continues with Italian Noir: The Story Of Italian Crime Fiction, also on BBC Four at 9.30pm on Monday, 27 December.

Comments made by writers on the TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently: How slavishly should a screen adaptation follow the book?

2010-12-16T10:33:15+00:00

It's been made very clear to me, mainly through conversations on Twitter, that a lot of people hold the Dirk Gently books in great affection and that they are going to be very upset if we don't get it right.

Dirk is described as "a pudgy man who normally wears a heavy old light brown suit, red checked shirt with a green striped tie, long leather coat, red hat and thick metal-rimmed spectacles".

Well, I'm a man; we got that much right. But I'm not that pudgy and I play Dirk wearing none of the clothes described.

Does that matter? Should they have scoured the country for a chunkier actor? I believe there are some out there.

Without the red hat is the whole enterprise doomed to failure? Is playing him without a green striped tie tantamount to dancing on Douglas Adams' grave?

There are still people out there furious that James Bond is being played by a man with blond hair.

A blond Bond? The books say he has black hair falling down over the right eyebrow!

It's a thorny old question - how slavishly should a screen adaptation follow the book?

Some people won't be satisfied unless the images they had in their head whilst reading the novel are translated exactly onto the screen.

But what most people want, I imagine, is that they enjoy the screen version as much as, if not more, than they enjoyed the book and that the spirit of the book is preserved - if not the thick metal-rimmed glasses.

In my opinion Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul are unfilmable as written.

You couldn't begin to do justice to them in a single hour of television. Too much happens, there are too many ideas.

So Howard Overman, our writer who knows a thing or two about writing for television, as any of you who watched Misfits will know, decided that if he was going to write an hour of telly then it needed to work as an hour of telly first and foremost.

It sounds obvious but you'd be amazed how often that isn't the priority.

Once that's established and you realise that you can't shoehorn the whole book into that time, you've got some decisions to make, what's in and what's out? What do we need to invent or add to make what's in work?

Once everyone's happy with the script, you cast it. Again, does it matter that I don't look like the Dirk that's described in the books? Is it enough that the actor gets the spirit of the character?

Dirk is one of the most interesting and complex characters I've played. He's charming, irritating, bright, funny, hapless, unreadable, transparent, roguish, chaotic, philanthropic and possibly dishonest.

If I get all that right, am I allowed to be too thin?

Television is a team sport, novel writing isn't. Our film has creative input from Howard, me, the director, the producer, the rest of the cast and dozens of others.

And all the stuff from the books that doesn't feature is still sitting there ready for us to use once the BBC commissions a 58-part series...

I'm extremely proud of how it's turned out. I hope you enjoy it.

Stephen Mangan plays Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently.

Dirk Gently is on BBC Four and BBC HD on Thursday, 16 December at 9pm.

Comments made by writers on the TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.

The Song Of Lunch: Making a poem into a drama

2010-10-07T09:15:56+00:00

One of my oldest friends, Martin Goodman, now the professor of creative writing at Hull University, thrust a little book into my hands about six months ago saying he thought the poem contained within, The Song of Lunch, would make a great film.

Martin had just taken over the professorship from Christopher Reid, the author of the poem.

The Song of Lunch in itself, is quite a brief story: man leaves his office, walks through town to a restaurant and has lunch with an old flame. However, as with all things great, it is also a huge story.

It is mythical - it is a Greek tragedy - it is Orpheus and Eurydice - it is a man trying to bring back to life his dead wife.

And is that possible? You will have to watch to find out...

Before I had even finished reading it, I could see that this piece of narrative poetry would, indeed, be able to be transformed into a film: and most excitingly, nothing would need to be added - it was all there - the location described, the action relayed, the interior narrative and the dialogue was all present in the original writing.

I met up with the marvellous Christopher Reid at a local pub for a slightly boozy lunch and he kindly allowed me to put my case to the BBC.

I know Auntie gets a kicking a lot of the time, but all I can say is God bless public service broadcasting. I know no other broadcaster would have the vision, the bravery and the commitment to undertake a piece of work such as this, and for that the BBC should be praised.

Allegedly, nobody had ever witnessed a quicker commission - partly as I thought the piece should be broadcast on National Poetry Day (which was fast-approaching) and partly because our two stars, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson had a tiny window of availability (also fast-approaching).

Within a couple of weeks of my 'pitch' I was working with an executive, Sarah Brown, and a producer, Pier Wilkie - carefully going through the poem, putting it into script form, and finally working with our wonderful director, Niall MacCormick.

We were all in utterly uncharted territory, for, as far as we were aware, a poem had never been made into a film before: how were we to transpose verse into film - what were the rules, what was the grammar, how do we move from the interior monologue to dialogue?

Working closely with Christopher Reid, who, thankfully, sanctioned various cuts in the piece, a shooting script was put together and we embarked on 10 very hard days of filming. The filming coincided with the 30 degrees plus heatwave we had in London over the summer, and sitting in a heavily-lit restaurant, poor Emma got heat exhaustion on the first day of the shoot.

Air-conditioning units were wheeled in for the remaining days, gallons of water drunk, but it was still like an oven on set.

My job, as far as I saw it, was to try and launch the piece - persuade the BBC to make it, ask my old chum, Alan Rickman, if he'd like to do it, thankfully also have my wife, Emma, fall in love with the piece, work on the script up until the shoot - and then just to let all the wonderful people get on with it - for I thought there is nothing worse than having an executive producer (for that was my title) get in the way of the filming process.

The result is thrilling: a film full of hope, despair, regret, drunkenness, verbal dexterity, but above all, humour. The humour of life, of the absurd.

From the outset, I was adamant that this piece had to stand up in its own right, shouldn't be seen as a rarefied intellectual exercise, that we, as the audience, should forget that this is a poem, until a rhyming couplet suddenly jumps out at us - above all, we should be taken on a wonderful journey, surrounded by words: words seamlessly moving from voice-over narration into dialogue, back into narration.

We should wallow in a sea of words: hear them, taste them, smell them.

I am so proud of everyone connected with this film and I hope the joy I feel is shared by all who watch it.

Greg Wise is the executive producer of The Song Of Lunch.

The Song Of Lunch is on at 9pm on Friday, 8 October on BBC Two and BBC HD.

Sherlock: For Holmes and Watson, the game is afoot

2010-07-23T09:50:28+00:00

I still have the first Sherlock Holmes book I ever owned. It had a purple spine (the purple of one of Holmes' dressing gown, I liked to imagine), a Sidney Paget illustration on the front and a wonderful introduction which ended with the magical words, "I wish I were reading these stories for the first time."

I can remember the frisson I felt then. I was reading them for the first time!

Now, more than 30 years later it's sheer delight to bring a modern-day Sherlock to BBC One. It came about as a result of very pleasant chats with Steven Moffat as both of us travelled to and from Cardiff for various Doctor Who duties.

It seems nicely fitting that it all started on a train. We're both huge fans of the original stories and the absolute copper-bottomed genius of Arthur Conan Doyle's writing.

It didn't take long, though, for us both to shyly admit that our favourite versions of the oft-told tales were the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce films of the 1930s and 1940s. Particularly the ones where they brought them up to date.

This may sound like heresy but really it isn't. Although Steven and I are second to none in loving the flaring gas-lit atmosphere of a lovely old London, it felt as though Sherlock Holmes had become all about the trappings and not the characters.

Also, the original stories are models of their kind. Incredibly modern, dialogue-driven, fast paced and short! What better way to get back to the roots of these fantastic creations than to make Holmes and Watson living, breathing, modern men just as they had been originally?

Happily for us, the BBC were immediately excited at the idea of modern Sherlock Holmes.

Some might think that's a depressing indicator of our major broadcaster falling back on the most familiar of fictional archetypes, but it isn't. Sherlock Holmes may be the most filmed character in all fiction but to reinvent him for a new audience - as well as fans - is not just thrilling and exciting, it's an honour.

From the very outset, what excited us was the very rare chance to go right back to the beginning. To get to the heart of the characters.

In the very first story, A Study in Scarlet, Dr John Watson, an army surgeon, is invalided home from war in Afghanistan. Well, sad but true, we're pretty much in the same war now.

A chance meeting with an old friend leads to him sharing rooms with a mysterious man called Sherlock Holmes. For 'sharing rooms', read 'flat-share'! Again, you don't have to strain for the modern parallels. If anything, the idea of two bachelors living together is more common now than in the 19th Century.

And then there's the immortal first meeting between the two men destined to become the best, but least likely of friends. It's still in Bart's Hospital, we still have young Stamford. What's thrilling, though, is that this legendary moment has hardly ever been dramatised.

And so a new audience gets to meet Sherlock Holmes through John Watson's eyes and ask the question: who are you?

After that, it was all fun with perplexing decisions! What are the immutable aspects of the characters and the stories? They'd call themselves Sherlock and John now, of course. Who calls their best friend by their surname?

They still live in Baker Street, but next door to a sandwich shop, and they get a good deal on the rent because Sherlock did Mrs Hudson a favour. And the lady herself! Landlady not housekeeper.

Doyle wrote of Holmes having a "certain quiet primness of dress" so we've made Sherlock a neat, almost conservative dresser. Yet he needs to feel different. Special. So the Byronic Benedict in his big winter coat can't possibly wear a paper forensic suit or it's all too CSI.

And what about that? Doyle virtually invented forensic detection. How can Sherlock exist in a world where the police do all the finger-printing, criminal profiling and analysis that were once his unique attribute?

The answer, in our version anyway, is that Sherlock Holmes is still, and always, the best and wisest man there is. The police may be able to put clues together, but only Sherlock has the vast brain power and imagination that can make the huge leaps of deduction.

As for Watson's stories for The Strand magazine, he now writes up their adventures in a blog. It is online for all to see, including references to the cases we'll never know about!

Addressing the heresy once more, I can only say again that Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are immortal. It's been a privilege and a thrill to put our new version of Doyle's blessed and wonderful creations onto the screen. We hope you enjoy. The game is on!

Mark Gatiss is the co-creator of Sherlock and writer of episode three.

Sherlock starts on Sunday, 25 July at 9pm on BBC One and BBC HD. To find out times of all future episodes, please visit the upcoming episodes page.

Disappearing Dad: is fiction better off without fathers?

2010-06-29T15:08:48+00:00

When I had the chance to write and present the documentary Disappearing Dad, about fathers in fiction, I immediately knew which way I wanted to go.

I had just been trying to invent a plot for a novel, and I'd been thinking it would be useful if the villain of the piece had been psychologically damaged by his evil father.

Then I'd thought, 'Hold on, I can't do that again' and looking over the plotlines of my first half dozen books it had struck me how often the father was mad, bad, just generally useless, or entirely absent.

Perhaps this explained why my latest novel has been on my father's bookshelf for the past six months with the bookmark at page 20.

In fact, I have a perfectly good relationship with my dad; it's just that if a father does play his paternal role correctly, there can be no story. He would, by means of his restraining hand, his wise counsel or financial support, step in to prevent any misadventures occurring. Much better to kill him off in chapter three, as Robert Louis Stevenson does with Jim Hawkins's father in Treasure Island.

Dad is usually dead in any decent children's story, whether it be Harry Potter or The Tale of Peter Rabbit, whose father was not only killed but also eaten by Mr McGregor.

In the course of filming, I looked at a whole library-shelf full of children's books, and dad had been killed off in almost every one.

As clips in the film will show, Mr Bennet, of Pride and Prejudice is laid-back to the point of negligence, whilst my favourite author, Dickens, specialised mainly in orphans.

Of the fathers who do take centre stage in his books, Mr Dombey of Dombey and Son causes disaster by playing the role of the unbending paterfamilias, whereas Mr Micawber (David Copperfield) and William Dorrit (Little Dorrit) are more childish than their own children.

In the second half of the 20th century, it wasn't just authors who were against fathers, it was the whole of society. The youthquake of the 1960s, the rise of feminism, and the culture of 'cool' mean that any male hoping to exert familial authority was ripe for a kicking.

In the kitchen-sink novels of the fifties, 'father' has become dad, a risible figure who's wasted his life down a coal mine, and never had sex with anyone except the woman he married.

At least he didn't aspire to be like his children, but today's father has capitulated to youth culture. He wears shorts in summer; he drinks his coffee from a mug marked Cool Daddy; he reads books telling him to become his children's 'best mate'.

The film features clips from Man and Boy, from the novel by Tony Parsons, and About A Boy (Nick Hornby), both featuring middle aged men learning life lessons from young boys, and very excruciating is the process.

My advice to any author is: despatch dad quickly and cleanly early on, before he starts killing all the magic of your story with his male-pattern baldness, his dodgy knees, and his unsympathetic and uncomprehending or - worse still - his sympathetic and comprehending attitude towards the modern world and the beautiful young people in it.

Andrew Martin is the presenter of Disappearing Dad.

Disappearing Dad is broadcast on Tuesday, 29 June at 9pm on BBC Four, part of the Fatherhood Season.

BBC Four controller Richard Klein has also written for the BBC TV blog on the Fatherhood season.