Missing Poldark? Don't fret! There's a host of classic TV remakes on the way
The current revival of Poldark — 40 years after the original — may be over, but the nation shouldn't worry. Mail TV critic CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reveals there are plenty of other steamy remakes in the pipeline for later this year and 2016...
Wet shirts and tight breeches
WAR AND PEACE, BBC
The book was brilliantly done in 20 episodes on British TV in 1972 and starred Alan Dobie
This six-hour adaptation of Tolstoy's great novel is being filmed on location in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania for screening next year...but the focus will not be on the scenery but on brooding Prince Andrei, its romantic hero.
Screenwriter Andrew Davies — whose adaptations of classics from Pride And Prejudice to Bleak House have provided some of TV's greatest moments — plans to make the prince 'very much the Darcy figure'.
This is a reference to Colin Firth, who smouldered 20 years ago in Pride And Prejudice. So expect plenty of wet shirts and tight breeches: 'We want to get the women of England excited,' says Davies.
James Norton, who won acclaim as the sleuthing Fifties vicar in Grant-chester, has called the chance to play Andrei 'a privilege...he's a wonderfully rich, conflicted character'.
The book was brilliantly done in 20 episodes on British TV in 1972 and starred Sir Anthony Hopkins as soul-searching aristo Pierre Bezukhov.
American Paul Dano will play Bezukhov in the new version. But all eyes will be on Downton's Lily James as heroine Natasha. Comedian Ade Edmondson is her father, Count Rostov, with Greta Scacchi his wife. Gillian Anderson and Rebecca Front are a pair of scheming society ladies.
Davies admits he wasn't a lifelong fan of the novel, reckoned by many to be the best ever written: 'I came to it for the first time rather late in life,' he admits. 'I was struck by how fresh and modern the characters felt — it's a story of the hopes and dreams of youth, set against the titanic background of the Napoleonic wars.'
Lust behind the garden shed
LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, BBC
Game Of Thrones meets The Borgias in a once-banned classic — it's a formula guaranteed to generate headlines so steamy your glasses will fog up when it is released later this year.
Richard Madden — doomed hero Robb Stark in Game Of Thrones — is earthy gamekeeper Mellors in this adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel.
Holliday Grainger (best known as Lucrezia Borgia) is the upper-class bride whose husband (James Norton again) returns from World War I with a wound that has left him impotent.
Period delight: Joely Richardson and Sean Bean in Lady Chatterley's Lover - that will appear on the BBC
This most sexually charged novel was outlawed by the censors on its appearance in 1928 and could not legally be published until after a landmark obscenity trial in 1960.
This 90-minute version is condensed for TV by Jed Mercurio, known for police corruption drama, Line Of Duty.
This is not the first time Lady C has caused a stir on TV. In 1993 it made a star of Sean Bean, who was later cast in Napoleonic war series Sharpe and as a Bond villain in Goldeneye.
It was a breakthrough role for a 28-year-old Joely Richardson, too, though she was distressed at the amount of full-frontal nudity demanded by director Ken Russell.
In one scene, she was seen having sex in a boat house. 'I thought it could have been played differently,' she fumed.
Russell wasn't happy either — he had wanted Liz Hurley for the role of Lady Chatterley.
A comedy version was adapted in the Fifties by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson for an episode of Hancock's Half Hour, sadly now lost. Hattie Jacques played Lady Chatterley . . .
Pipe-smoking Paris sleuth
MAIGRET, ITV
No ONE was expecting to hear Rowan Atkinson announce that he plans to play tough Parisian sleuth Inspector Maigret.
The Blackadder star will follow Sir Michael Gambon, who played Maigret in the Nineties, in a dozen episodes on ITV. More than a dozen actors played the pipe-smoking inspector before that, including Richard Harris and Charles Laughton.
Jean Richard portrayed him on French TV until 1990, with Bruno Cremer taking over for the following 15 years, but to Maigret's creator, novelist Georges Simenon, the best of all was British actor Rupert Davies. The survivor of the wartime German prison camp Stalag Luft III made more than 50 appearances as Maigret at the start of the Sixties. Tall and imposing, he was ideal for the part of the sturdy detective.
At first, it's hard to imagine Atkinson in the role. His rubber face will be a disadvantage: Maigret is imperturbable.
But the Mr Bean star is a fan: 'I have been a devourer of the Maigret novels for many years,' he says. 'I'm very much looking forward to playing such an intriguing character, at work in Paris during a fascinating period in its history.'
The Atkinson remakes will be set in Fifties France. ITV says it was inspired to revive the character because of the success of modern European TV crime-busters, such as Sweden's Wallander and The Killing from Denmark.
A pair of two-hour specials are being filmed: Maigret Sets A Trap and Maigret's Dead Man.
They are direct adaptations of Simenon novels — the Belgian-born writer used to pen a complete book in a burst of white-hot creativity, barely sleeping for eight nights.
He would then take the following three weeks off to pursue women obsessively.
He claimed to have bedded more than ten thousand by the time he was 70.
First love in the haystack
CIDER WITH ROSIE, BBC
Laurie LEE'S memoir of his Twenties' Cotswolds boyhood comes to our screens later this year. Director Philippa Lowthorpe has a strong track record with Call The Midwife, and Cider With Rosie is set to appeal to that same audience.
Samantha Morton, who found fame almost 20 years ago in a TV version of Jane Eyre, plays the writer's mother.
Laurie is played by 14-year-old Archie Cox, while sitcom veterans Annette Crosbie and June Whitfield are his grandmothers. Jessica Hynes is teacher Miss Crabby.
Juliet Stevenson and Joe Robertson star in the upcoming BBC drama series, Cider with Rosie
The daughter of Lord Of The Rings' Andy Serkis, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, plays Laurie's cousin — the Rosie of the title.
The real Rosie, Rosalind Buckland, died last year aged 99. She always said the book's famous love scene, involving a haystack and a flagon of cider, had only ever happened in Laurie's fevered imagination.
She admitted, though, that she thought the novel was 'a lovely book'.
It's only 15 years since ITV made a critically acclaimed version that was written by Rumpole Of The Bailey author John Mortimer and starred Juliet Stevenson.
Forbidden passion
THE GO-BETWEEN, BBC
Another bookish choice for the Corporation later this year is The Go-Between from the novel by L. P. Hartley — famous for its opening line: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'
Adrian Hodges, known for Sunday night swashbuckler The Musketeers, has adapted the tale of forbidden passion.
'It's been a real labour of love,' he says. 'It is a book I have admired ever since I read it many years ago, and its subtle power and devastating emotional impact remains undiminished.'
A story of lost innocence, it centres on Leo, an elderly man who recalls his childhood after he discovers the diary he kept when he was 13 years old.
A 1971 movie, directed by Joseph Losey with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, starred Alan Bates and Julie Christie. This version is regarded as one of the highpoints of romantic yet intellectual film-making — and so an ambitious choice for a remake by the BBC.
Joanna Vanderham and Stephen Campbell Moore are the stars this time around, though the production will have special significance for one actor, Jim Broadbent, who plays Leo in old age.
He appeared in the 1971 version as a spectator at a cricket match — his first film acting role. The part was too small to earn a credit, but this time, his name will be at the top of the cast list.
Crime Queen's lost tales
PARTNERS IN CRIME, BBC 1
David WALLIAMS and Jessica Raine will play Agatha Christie's married sleuths Tommy and Tuppence Beresford in a six-part series out this summer.
It marks the crime queen's 125th anniversary, and is based on two of her stories, The Secret Adversary and N Or M.
The characters have never really caught the public imagination like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple — they always lacked that classic touch of the Christie macabre.
James Warwick and Francesca Annis as Agatha Christie's married sleuths in 1983
Despite this, their adventures have been filmed before, with James Warwick and Francesca Annis in the Eighties. A radio adaptation was broadcast recently.
Walliams believes the stories are under-rated.
'I was first drawn to the delicious notion of a married couple solving crimes together,' he says. 'Tommy and Tuppence are iconic Christie characters, among her very best work.'
Another ambitious remake will be And Then There Were None, based on Christie's most successful book.
It will be screened at Christmas.
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