The BBC’s adaptation of JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy promises to surprise even viewers who have read the book after screenwriter Sarah Phelps changed the original ending because it was too “grim”.
Phelps, a former EastEnders scriptwriter who has previously worked on the BBC’s adaptations of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, said the climax to the novel was too bleak for viewers who needed “some kind of redemptive moment at the end of it all”.
“What works in a novel doesn’t always work on screen,” Phelps told the Radio Times.
“Nobody wants a finger wagged in their face, and I learned on EastEnders that if you just go ‘grim, grim, grim’, viewers will simply disengage. If you’ve invested three hours of your leisure time to watch a show and get involved, there’s got to be reward.
“You’ve got to think that it was worth it and that the characters aren’t just a pack of shits; they’ve got to be a little bit funny, a little bit understandable.”
Phelps said Rowling had been “exceptionally generous” about the three-part adaptation, starring Michael Gambon, Keeley Hawes, Julia McKenzie and Rory Kinnear, which begins on BBC1 on Sunday.
“I was very straight with Jo and told her that I needed to write a different ending,” said Phelps.
“It’s still heartbreaking, but I had to find some kind of redemptive moment at the end of it all, that sense that after the tragedy, someone gets to stand with a slightly straighter back.
“It’s one thing adapting a writer who’s been dead for a century or so, but when you have a writer who is not only very much living and breathing but who is as phenomenally successful as JK Rowling, the dynamic is rather different.”
The Casual Vacancy, Rowling’s first novel for adult readers, came out to enormous hype and mixed reviews in 2012. The BBC’s adaptation is a co-production with HBO.
A Guardian preview said the drama had a “definite ring of Midsomer Mugglemarch about it”.
Phelps said: “I met up with Jo in Edinburgh to talk about the book, writer to writer.
“I told her what I thought the book was about, which characters really leapt out at me, and how I might shape the series and she just said, ‘Great. That’s your job.’
“I suppose, having seen Harry Potter adapted, she must be used to it, but it still meant a lot that she trusted me just to get on with it.”
* The Casual Vacancy begins on BBC1 on Sunday at 9pm
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