And can we have a moratorium on any new projects depicting Sherlock Holmes? Between the Robert Downey Jr films, and TV’s Sherlock and Elementary, there has been no escaping the famous detective so far this century. (Let’s not even go there with Razzie Worst Picture winner Holmes & Watson.) There must be other characters from British literature we can bring to the screen instead of the same ones over and over and over again.
Or French literature. This week sees yet another adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables arrive on TV (starts Sun., Mar. 10 at 8.30pm; BBC First). Coming just six years after the Academy Award–winning film version of the musical, this British miniseries dispenses with the singing, which is good news for those still recovering from the numbers performed by Crowe (him again!), but it’s still a period piece that follows the same story many of us just watched.
Granted, it’s a very fine-looking period piece, with a great cast including Dominic West, Lily Collins and David Oyelowo, but surely there’s another literary classic that hasn’t had some sort of update in the past decade that could have done with one instead?
Or maybe not. Beloved books are being adapted with increased regularity. Books like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which was turned into a BBC series in 2017 and a (not very good) film in 2018. It’ll be back next summer in an all-star (Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern) affair directed by Greta Gerwig. What next: new versions of the Harry Potter films? Surely it’s only a matter of (not very much) time.
