Resnick I've been working with David Hunter, a
BBC Radio 4 drama producer, on adapting the Resnick novels and
short stories.
Two of the novels, Wasted
Years and Cutting
Edge, were successfully broadcast
in 1995/6. Towards the end of 1997,
David commissioned an original two-part script, featuring Resnick,
titled Slow Burn.
This script I transformed
into the short story of the same name which can he found in Now's
The Time. Another of the stories from
that collection, Cheryl, featuring
Keith Baron as Resnick and Gwen Taylor as the scarlet-suited
meals on wheels
lady, was broadcast (twice) in 2001 and Keith continues as Resnick
in another adapted story, Bird
of Paradise.
Graham
Greene The Frederica Quartet Adapted in thirty fifteen minute episodes
from the novels of A. S. Byatt and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in
two batches, all going out at 10.45 each morning and repeated
at 7.45 each evening. The first group started on Monday, 13th
May 2002 and continued for three weeks, the second on Monday,
9th September for a further three weeks.
The Heart of the Matter A two-part dramatisation of the novel
by Graham Greene, starring Charles Dance & Harriet Walter.
Originally broadcast on Sunday 21st & 28th October, 2001.
"The rewarding
sound of a star-studded cast filling the airwaves heightens this
already exemplary adaptation of Graham Greene's classic.
...John Harvey's dramatisation is in keeping with Greene's
serious work, full of the tension-infused dilemmas
and searching dialogue that makes it perfectly suited to
both radio and film." Mail On Sunday
"John Harvey's
succesful dramatisation of GG's angst ridden novel set in
a West African colony during the Second World War.
Charles Dance and the ever-expressive Harriet Walter
star in the story of a police officer whose 'terrible
sense of responsibility' towards both his wife and his mistress leads
him to questions his conscience and ultimately his love
for God."
The Observer
The End
of the Affair
Prior to this, an earlier dramatisation of Graham Greene's The
End of The Affair, also produced and directed by
Sally Avens, which was broadcast on Easter Monday, 13th April
1998 with fine performances from Alex Jennings,
Emma Fielding and John Rowe.
The reviews of,
such as exist for radio drama, were more than kind, the Independent
on Sunday calling it a "superb dramatisation",
The Sunday Times saying "It
is most beautifully done, rich with the oblique
ambiguities of the book as well as its taut narrative"
and The Observer praising the
way "the dramatisation
captures the atmosphere of spiritual angst particularly well."
This production of The
End of the Affair gained Silver
(runner-up) in the Drama
Section of the Sony Radio Awards for 1998.
Various
Other radio dramatisations have been based on the work of such
writers as A S Byatt, Richard Ford, Bobbie Ann
Mason and Jayne Anne Phillips.
Also on radio I've been lucky to be
asked to do quite a bit of arts journalism and reviewing for
such programmes
as "Front Row" and Night
Waves in addition to writing and
presenting three half-hour programmes for the
BBC Arts Unit. These were The
Lemonade King, a thirty minute
documentary abut the life and music of the
late, great Scottish jazz trumpet player Alex Welsh; Riding
the River, a look at the poetry
and jazz scene in the
UK, into which I smuggled an excerpt from one of my own readings
with the Second Nature jazz group, and a
programme devoted to the work of that excellent writer, Walter
Mosley.
My work for television has divided pretty evenly between adaptations
- of my own writing as well as other
people's - and original screenplays.
The first adaptations I did were BBC "Classic"
serials based on novels by the under-rated
British writer, Arnold Bennett. Anna
of the Five Towns was first, followed by Sophia
and
Constance, which was supposedly more appealing title
the BBC gave to The Old Wives'
Tale.
In 1991/2 I adapted two of my own Resnick
books —Lonely
Hearts and Rough Treatment
— for transmission on
BBC Television. These starred Tom Wilkinson as Resnick.
Although these Resnick programmes have been
sold to a number of countries (their sombre tones went down
especially well in Scandinavia!) they have only recently been
shown in the States, where full-length versions of
both adaptations are being rotated on the BBC's own cable channel,
BBC America. Unfortunately, this doesn't
have too wide a throw as yet, but at least they are being shown
in some places and if you're desperate you could
ask a friend who receives that channel to tape them for you.
Amongst the original drama I've written for
television are a couple of episodes of Spender
(only one of which was actually screened; the story line for
the other forming the basis for the
Resnick novel, Wasted Years)
and most notably, I suppose, certainly closer to my heart, a
series for Central Television called Hard
Cases, which dealt with a team of Nottingham-based
Probation Officers and their clients, and which acted as a kind
of dry run for the Resnick
crime series.
