BBC Three Was Killed Off To Make Room For New Versions of Old Versions Of Older Books
WHILE the world moves on at a terrifying speed, there’s one thing you can always rely on – the BBC’s fondness for wheeling out the cadavers of old books.
If it has hay dappled by golden sun, people heaving their bosoms in bay windows, rugged bastards who own loads of land and randy farmhands, you know that the BBC is going to be all over it like a rash, making cat-ladies and men in corduroy swoon with gusset quivering delight.
And right on cue, BBC One is going to air a new adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as part of a special season based around twentieth century literature.
Jed Mercurio who is adapting the D.H Lawrence classic says: “Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a novel that constitutes a milestone of English literature. I’m immensely excited by this opportunity to dramatise its iconic themes in a fresh and original way.” And if it’s anything like the one shown years ago with Sean Bean (pronounced ‘Shaun Baun’ for the record), lonely ladies and gay gentlemen will definitely be treated to the sight of some olde worldy genitals.
If you haven’t read it, then it is the typical tale of a love that straddles class, with a posh woman having it off with a scrubber. That’s the gist anyway.
It doesn’t end there! Someone called Ben Vanstone is going to adapt Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie. Alas, this isn’t the fun story of an old pisspot who gets up to all kinds of trouble, but rather, it is set in an idyllic Cotswold village, during and immediately after the Great War. We see a coming-of-age in a world based on grass and farting animals rather than electricity or cars.
Completing the season are adaptions of The Go-Between by LP Hartley and JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls.
The season was commissioned by Charlotte Moore, Controller of BBC One who says: “These four classic works each represent a real moment in our recent history when Britain was on the cusp of great social and cultural change.”
“This season of films aims to explore and contextualise the enormous changes in the way men and women lived and behaved in the 20th century. They all tell uniquely intense and personal stories about people living in Britain 100 years ago.”
And screw you if you want anything modern. BBC Three was killed off for a reason.
NOTE: Why not rerun the versions already in existence?
Posted: 24th, April 2014 | In: TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
