Excuse me if I’m a little confused today. I’ve swapped days with Terri, and Thursday feels different for some reason. I have no idea why it should; one freelance day is much like another, except weekends, of course, and Fridays when I go shopping before I start work. But there it is. So forgive any disarray in my state of mind.
OK, to the business of the day. A few months ago my all-time favourite crime writer, Phil Rickman, author of the utterly awesome Merrily Watkins series among other things, announced that Merrily was going to be on TV. A production company had bought the rights to the second novel (which Phil sometimes recommends new readers choose first; yeah, I know, it’s complicated...) and it would air on a satellite channel as a three-parter in the autumn.
It did, and on a major terrestrial channel, not just satellite, so I was able to watch it.
Sad fan that I am, I occasionally exchange e-mails with Phil, and he warned me. It’s not the same as the books, he said. Things have to change for TV.
OK, I knew that. I was prepared. Sort of. Looking forward to it, even; two of the main characters seemed to be perfectly cast, and they hadn’t done anything stupid like relocate it away from the Welsh Borders, an area which is kind of central to the entire concept.
But...
As I said, he warned me. I should have realized what would happen. And it did. For the benefit of anyone who isn’t familiar with the books (and everyone should be; they’re brilliant, and I can hardly wait for the next one, out in December), Merrily Watkins is a Church of England vicar, which roughly translates as an Episcopalian priest, like Clare Fergusson in Julia Spencer-Fleming’s almost as awesome series, though not like Clare at all. Merrily is also the diocese’s deliverance consultant, which roughly translates as exorcist. Which means she gets involved in some pretty spooky goings-on, though since the books fall firmly into the crime fiction category, there’s always a murder or two (or three, sometimes six) as well, and some ongoing cops to deal with them. And Phil very sensibly leaves the reader to draw his/her own conclusions about the spookiness, which is invariably a mixture of good and bad, just like everything else. And the whole ambience, the whole point, unless I’m reading it all wrong, and I really don’t think I am, is that the battle between good and evil goes on not just inside the church on Sundays but every day in people’s ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) lives.
Except the TV version couldn’t leave it at that, could they? Phil Rickman has created not only a brilliant character in Merrily, but also a rich, multi-faceted, wonderfully real world for her to inhabit, so that the battle against evil not only becomes a fight to keep that world unharmed but also gives Merrily a safe haven and touchstone to keep her (and the reader) grounded, and provides a balanced view about faith in all its myriad manifestations. That world and the people in it are what give the books their unique quality. But because packing close to 150,000 words of book into three 45-minute episodes is impossible, guess what they pared away?
All that was left of it was the prickly relationship between Merrily and her teenage daughter. They excised one key character completely, changed the backstory of another out of all recognition, turned up the spook factor and emotional heat almost to boiling point...
Well, he did warn me. This was TV, and the pictures had to be right there, in our faces, on the screen. Fortunately they didn’t wipe out the ones in my mind. Often, after watching a TV or film version of a book, I find the lead character starts to wear the actor’s face in my mind as well as on the screen. This time that hasn’t happened. Don’t get me wrong; Anna Maxwell-Martin did a fine job. But she’s the TV Merrily, and when I see her in other TV dramas, as I’m sure I shall, I shan’t wonder why she isn’t wearing a dog-collar. In my imagination, the book Merrily still looks the way she always did. So do all the other characters, whether or not they appeared in the TV version.
So in future I’ll be staying with the books. They can do what they like on TV; I don’t have to watch.
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