Mining for TV gold
24
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BBC
Eva Green as Lydia Wells in The Luminaries
BBC One’s adaptation of The Luminaries brings a subversive edge to period drama. Caroline Frost learns how it was done
t is a brave screenwriter who takes on the task of squeezing a Booker-prizewinning doorstopper of a novel into six hours of television, even if that writer is the book’s author herself. It took Eleanor Catton seven years to adapt her 2013 novel The Luminaries for the screen (after a relatively brief five years writing the book), and plenty of playing with both form and story that another writer might not have dared. “If Eleanor hadn’t been involved, I doubt we could have been so subversive,” reflects director Claire McCarthy on filming the 832-page tome, which tells the story of the 1866 gold rush in New Zealand’s South Island, complete with betrayal, brothels and a murder mystery, as well as an “astrological love affair” at its centre. The first episode of the six-part series led to complaints from viewers who struggled with its opening scenes, shot in near darkness and with little explanation of where they fitted into the complicated timeframe of the story. But The Luminaries is well worth sticking with – not least for its rich production, stellar performances and the way it avoids many of the clichés of period drama and brings a refreshing, feminist take to what is often portrayed as a macho world. “Eleanor had to honour the characters, be faithful to historical detail and bring the characters off the page but also to streamline, so that it didn’t feel literary or ponderous,” says McCarthy. “There were lots of things to show, so we had to dance a fine line between playing with narrative and bringing a lot of archetypal ideas, then turning them on their head and asking what they mean to a TV audience.” Producer Lisa Chatfield agrees that the challenge was immense: “There are jumps in time in the book as well, but it starts with 12 men meeting in a bar. They know a crime has happened and they’re trying to figure out if they are culpable.
