What to watch and listen to this month

At more than 1,300 pages, Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel A Suitable Boy, a sprawling saga that involves the interlinked fates of four large Indian families, may not seem the most obvious candidate for adaptation as a sixpart TV drama. But that’s to reckon without Andrew Davies, who previously condensed down Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the BBC, and director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding).

The story they tell together is set in the north of the country in the early 1950s, as India is CDQWV VQ gQ VQ VJG RQNNU KP KVU TUV FGOQETCVKE general election. These are heady times for university student Lata (Tanya Maniktala), coming of age at the same time as a new nation coalesces after the colonial era and partition.

LCVC’U OQVJGT KU FGVGTOKPGF VQ PF C husband – the ‘suitable boy’ of the title – for her daughter. But Lata herself is torn between a sense of duty, and her own yearning for romance and self-discovery.

Deepening the recurring theme of the EQPʚKEV DGVYGGP VTCFKVKQP CPF OQFGTPKV[ another story strand focuses on Maan (Ishaan Khatter), a relative of Lata’s by marriage. A privileged young man determined to enjoy himself, he is infatuated with a beautiful courtesan, Saeeda Bai (played by Bollywood legend Tabu), to the potential embarrassment of his politician father.