We’re just minutes into our interview and already the conversation has turned to brothels and sadomasochism. But perhaps this is not entirely surprising. Sauce is, after all, Andrew Davies’s trademark. As Britain’s greatest transformer of literary classics into raunchy, bodice-busting primetime TV, Davies is the man who added incest to War and Peace, put daddy-issue sex into the backstabbing Westminster drama House of Cards, and reinvented Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice as a wet-shirt-clad Colin Firth. None of those things, purists note, appear in the original texts.
Despite all these achievements, the 82-year-old writer never quite managed to smuggle his steamiest offerings into the nation’s living rooms. Take his adaptation of Fanny Hill, the 18th-century “memoirs of a woman of pleasure” that became one of the most prosecuted and banned novels. “This is a pornographic book,” says Davies. “There are lots of whips and sadomasochism – and I did try a couple of more explicit brothel scenes. But one works with a producer and a script editor, and they might say: ‘Um, we don’t think this is quite right for the BBC, Andrew.’ And so OK, it was worth a try.”
Speaking with Davies, who lives in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, is not unlike watching one of his dramas: innuendo and humour keep appearing, to spice up the serious and the considered. Conversation can quickly take on the slight sensation of romp, like when he talks about visiting sets. “I tend not to go much during filming,” he says. “As the writer, you don’t have a job so you’re hanging round like the spare prick at a wedding. I’ll go a couple of times, arrive before lunch, tell the actors they’re brilliant, and then leave shortly after.”
It’s easy to forget his advancing years: Davies has a mischievous laugh and still writes every day. But the biggest difference between now and when he started out comes whenever he goes to an award ceremony. “I’ve got a bad back,” he says, “so I don’t do as much dancing.”
As we speak, he is excited about Les Misérables, his much-heralded adaptation of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece of the 1832 Paris uprising. Three years in the making, and about to headline BBC One’s new year schedule, the series is spread over six hour-long episodes and boasts a principal cast of more than 100 – including Dominic West, Olivia Colman and David Oyelowo. The aim, clearly, is to be every bit as epic as the original 1,400-page novel – and, possibly, to banish memories of Russell Crowe bursting into song in the 2012 Hollywood musical version.
“Our tagline is ‘nobody sings’,” says Davies, who has won five Baftas and two Emmys. “It will be interesting to see how fans of the musical react, because I think they will be surprised by how much of Victor Hugo’s original story never made it into the musical. There’s so much more to it than many people know: about the cat-and-mouse relationship between Javert and Jean Valjean, and about Fantine and her early life – her happiness before the misery. We have explored all that. We’ve done it properly.”
The big question is of course this: how has he sexed it up? There have been rumours that Dominic West’s rear end gets an airing. He laughs. “You know, I do think sex is a huge motivation in a lot of these great 19th-century books but not so much in Les Misérables. I don’t think I’ve put a great deal in that wasn’t there. I’m sorry to disappoint.”
In reality, Davies rarely disappoints. He is a master of his craft. His gift lies in taking complex, sprawling novels and, while retaining the original spirit, boiling them down to something fast and fierce, full of fun and frolics. In his adaptations, nothing is sacred. Classic scenes are hacked away and completely new ones added, while beloved characters get killed off early or just never appear.
In House of Cards – his 1990 take on Michael Dobbs’ novel about Tory party skulduggery – he decided he wasn’t keen on the story’s original ending. His solution? To reverse it entirely and have the bad guy win. Dobbs liked it so much that, in a re-released edition of the book, he did likewise. When Netflix transferred the drama to Washington for a new US version in 2013, it followed suit.
“I think we all have this feeling when we’re reading a book: ‘Oh, I wish they’d written a scene between this character and that character.’ Or: ‘I wish this person wasn’t quite so prominent.’ And for me, it’s a question of being alert to those feelings, then writing them in. I do what I would like to see and hope the audience goes with me.”
Generally, it does. His credits read like a best of British TV and include definitive Dickens adaptations of Bleak House and Little Dorrit (in which the reclusive Miss Wade was transformed into an insatiable lesbian). Then there was Tipping the Velvet, complete with taboo-busting dildo revelry, not to mention Sunday night favourites Mr Selfridge and Doctor Zhivago. Among his fans is none other than Vladimir Putin: the Russian president said 2016’s War and Peace “captured the Russian soul, the epoch and the depth” of Leo Tolstoy’s original. “I’m certainly no fan of Putin,” says Davies. “But I’m happy enough he’s a fan of mine.”
He hopes Les Misérables, which has been made by the same team, will receive similar international acclaim. While writing it, he found himself surprised by its relevance, finding parallels between 19th-century France and the world in 2018. “This huge difference between the haves and have-nots still exists,” he says. “People are taking to the streets in Paris right now, but the inequalities are here in Britain too. And you wonder if anything has been learned. We had a very grand BBC launch in Piccadilly and it was pouring with rain and you had beggars sitting there on the wet pavement with nothing as we tiptoed past them in our best clothes and went in for a champagne reception.” He seems momentarily troubled. “There is a huge irony there. I see it, but I don’t know what can be done.”
Davies is rumoured to be the highest-paid screenwriter in the business but he comes from a background more aligned to the have-nots. Born in Cardiff, the grandson of a miner, his main dream as a young writer, he once said, was to “go to London, get drunk a lot and have loose women”. His first TV play, called Who’s Going to Take Me On?, was broadcast when he was 29, yet it was another 21 years before he became a full-time scriptwriter. In the meantime, he moved to the Midlands with his wife, Diana Huntley, had a couple of children and taught at schools and universities while continuing to write screenplays.
In a way, the teaching was a great apprenticeship. “I spent years trying to bring these classics to life for students,” he says. “In a sense, doing it on screen is just a grander, more expensive way of doing a lecture.” He chose to focus on adaptations, he has said, because his original works were always autobiographical – and this was a problem. “I live a very quiet life. There’s not very much to write plays about.”
His most famous work is perhaps 1995’s Pride and Prejudice, a Jane Austen retelling so filled with life, lust and laughter that it revolutionised costume drama. “We wanted to show that these were young people with all the same passions that we have,” he says. “They weren’t just bonnets.”
He is currently working on a new Austen adaptation. Sanditon, which will begin filming in spring, is a reworking of her great unfinished work about the transformation of a fishing village into a seaside town. ITV has described it as “lavish”. “She only wrote 100 pages or so,” he says, “which I’d used up midway through the first episode. So the rest I’ve had to make up. It’s been a blast.”
Yet there have been critics of the project. Some have asked if it is still appropriate for a man to transform the work of a woman. The word “appropriation” has been used. “To adapt a novel,” he says, “whether it’s by a man or a woman, it doesn’t matter what sex you are. You just have to know a lot about novels and a lot about adapting – which I do. You know, Sarah Waters didn’t have any problem with me doing Tipping the Velvet, which is not only by a woman but about lesbians. And I’m not one of those either. Will people say you have to be a murderer to write a convincing killer? It’s barmy.”
Sanditon is not the only thing he’s working on. He may be in his 80s but Davies hopes this decade will be his most productive yet. Another project is his upcoming version of A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth’s majestic novel set in post-colonial India. It will be the BBC’s first drama featuring an entirely non-white cast.
Another is a series based on John Updike’s Rabbit novels, which may be Davies’s first work made for a streaming service. “It’s early days but that might be on the cards,” he says, mentioning both Netflix and Amazon as potential platforms. “It would be a thrill.” And neither, I suggest, is averse to turning up the phwoar factor. “I know,” he says and gives that mischievous laugh one last time.
• Les Misérables starts on BBC One on Sunday.
