Midsomer Murders is a British TV series started 26 years ago, initially based on the novels by Caroline Graham.
The series has been an astounding success, as were the books. The TV series has had, till now, including the most recent series, 140 episodes, the series of books written by Caroline Graham is comprised of 7 novels. Say whaaaat?! Yup!
As many other people, I first watched the TV series and fell in love with it, with the characters, with the images they so beautifully present, the quirky village people and the interesting stories. I love the TV series and I sometimes watch them again just for the joy of it, although I have seen them repeatedly.
At some point I got curious about the books.
Wouldn’t it be fabulous if I actually read the books my beloved TV series was based on?
Yes, it would!
So I started looking for them. I never found them in charity shops, some books never seem to make their way there, so the only option was to buy them new, which I did.
Oh the joy when I had them all! I sorted them carefully in the order of publication, gave them their own little shelf and started reading them.
For the writers that have a limited number of books, I do not go and read all they have written all at once. I like to pace myself, so I have books from them for a longer period of time. So I read Caroline’s Graham books spaced out, when the longing gets too much.
The books are astounding, I love them and I enjoy them tremendously. Caroline Graham has a smart, funny way of writing that easily transports you to the world she has created.
Now comes the conflict!
After reading some of the books, I watched again the episodes in the first series that were meant to be based on the books themselves. To my surprise they were hugely different. You had the names of the characters, the general idea of the plot, but so many things were different, and new characters doing new things that I was like But this is not in the book! and my loyalty to the book filled me with outrage. But then, as before, I started to enjoy the story on the screen and that got me thinking.
They are different and both are great, so where does that leave me?
The only way I could accept this was to say to myself that they are separate, great works of art. They might have originated from the same idea, but then they grew and became different things, both worthy of admiration.
I had a similar experience with Cecelia Ahern’s PS I love you. The book and the movie are so different that at times they feel world’s apart, but still they both stem from the same idea and at their core you can identify the similarities.
Sometimes I think that series or movies after books are an interpretation of the written stories and not necessarily the written story.
What is certain is that I will continue reading the Midsomer books and watching the series, now set free by my acceptance of their differences and able to enjoy them in all their forms.
As a screenwriter who has adapted a few books, as well as a published book author, you're right that the two forms of storytelling are indeed different. Very few books have been adapted directly to screen as they were written, and very few of those that were are successful adaptations. That's because the story in a book is told with words, while the story on screen is told with pictures. Particularly with mystery novels, lots of the dialogue is "internal," which obviously cannot be recreated on-screen without using a boring voice-over. Also, since a book is "tell me" and a show is "show me", the events have to be told in a way that is visually interesting. Rather than an internal dialogue, if the dialogue is to be used, two characters can interact; if there isn't a character in the book that can be used, one has to be created.
A good example of this is Scorsese's recent "Killers of the Flower Moon." The book it's based on is excellent, but the story it tells is of the "white saviors" (the agents of the soon-to-be FBI) who solve the crimes. That could be done - and Scorsese and his collaborator wrote an initial screenplay that did that. But the real story is about how the leading white people of Oklahoma acted to steal the oil wealth of the Osage. So instead, the story was told through the relationship of the two people at the center of the events - the white man who married the Native American woman, intending work with his uncle to steal the wealth of Molly's family. One way to tell the story was a "police procedural," the other was a crime against the heart. Either would have worked, but emotionally the second worked far better on the screen. Same story.
I love Midsomer Murders and watch them over and over. I have found that books are often ‘adapted’ for screen. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (the Laurence Olivier version) and Gone With The Wind, some of my early huge change discoveries. It used to feel upsetting that the book was not followed but I later realised that it really doesn’t matter. I enjoy both book and film, so that is all I need 😊 I have wondered how it feels to be a screen writer, changing someone else’s work to ‘fit’. I have read/heard writers talk about how they feel when changes are suggested to their very precious story. Have you seen the film Saving Mr Banks? It really brings that struggle home. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it 😊 Net xx