Tuesday, April 09, 2019

Les Miserables

Blasphemy? Oh well.

"As far as Andrew Davies is concerned, adapting Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” to the screen independent of Alain Boubil, Jean-Marc Natel, and Herbert Kretzmer’s juggernaut musical was nothing short of an overdue necessity. “I hated the musical,” the writer stated outright at the Television Critics Assn.’s winter press tour in February. “I just wanted to rescue this great book from [that] pathetic virago.”"

For what it's worth, I didn't HATE the musical, and that's saying something, because I can't stand musicals. But this is about eight hours of more or less straightforward Victor Hugo, and that's very fine indeed as far as I'm concerned. Because Andrew Davies is right: this is a great book that deserves a reverent, non-musical treatment on screen. We get just that starting Sunday evening on PBS. 

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