Good news, folks! BBC is all set to start working on an upcoming period drama, its first to feature a non-white cast. What’s even more exciting is that the drama series will be based on Indian author Vikram Seth’s popular novel A Suitable Boy. Set in 1952, the story outlines the lives of four families in post-independence India. The novel mainly centres around Mrs Rupa Mehra, a mother who seeks a suitor for her younger daughter Lata. While Vikram Seth could compile their lives in 1349 pages, the BBC adaptation will be an eight-part series.
Welsh screenplay writer Andrew Davies has been roped in for the upcoming period drama. Davies is best known for House of Cards and his several adaptations including, Pride and Prejudice, War & Peace, Vanity Fair and Middlemarch.
“Historically, the story of British colonial rule has been the approach that British writers and producers have taken to telling a story set outside the UK,” BBC’s head of drama, Piers Wenger said about the upcoming show. “We are here to take creative risks and to do the sort of work that commercial broadcasters might be more reluctant to do. But we also have a real responsibility and a requirement to reflect a range of British communities.”
“It’s a 20th-century classic and it is obviously set outside the UK in a world which is non-white, non-British, and yet which has big universal themes at the heart of it,” he added. Principal photography for the show will commence later this year.
Published in 1993, A Suitable Boy is one of the longest single volume pieces in literature. Vikram Seth is current working on a sequel to the bestselling novel titled, A Suitable Girl. Unlike the 1993 novel, the sequel will be set in present day and will be published in 2017.
