Can ITV overcome the curse of Vanity Fair?
Previous screen versions of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel following the fortunes of social climber Becky Sharp have failed to live up to expectations so…
EVER since the silent movie director Charles Kent attempted to shoehorn Vanity Fair into a five minute-long production in 1911, TV and film directors have grappled with the challenge of transferring William Makepeace Thackeray’s epic tale of the ruthless and scheming social climber Becky Sharp to the screen.
Producers spend a small fortune on elaborate costumes, grand locations and star-studded casts only to find that the finished product fails to ignite the viewing public.
The BBC has serialised Thackeray’s classic 19th-century novel no fewer than four times and on the last occasion in 1998 the first episode came such a poor second to ITV’s Taggart that subsequent showings were shifted to a later slot to avoid a clash with Heartbeat.
And when the book was given the Hollywood treatment in 2004, with Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp and a supporting cast including James Purefoy, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins and Romola Garai – it still managed to lose money at the box office.
And so it’s no surprise to hear that ITV and Amazon Studios have rolled out the big guns to appear in their lavish £10million co-production which is due to hit our screens this autumn.
Doc Martin’s Martin Clunes plays Sir Pitt Crawley, national treasure Michael Palin acts as the show’s narrator Thackeray himself and Suranne Jones of Dr Foster fame is Miss Pinkerton, who gives Becky a place at her finishing school in return for her teaching French.
Meanwhile, the scriptwriter is Golden Globe-nominated Gwyneth Hughes, whose task was to adapt Thackeray’s story of a young woman attempting to claw her way out of poverty and scale the heights of English society against a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.
CLUNES for one is confident that the new series will do well. “Vanity Fair is absolutely relevant today,” he says. “It’s all about what people are really like. Because of the dimension Thackeray gives to each character and the way nothing is what it’s presented as – I think that’s as applicable now as ever.”
He adds: “Becky Sharp is probably the best female or male character in British literature. She’s phenomenal. I love her. Vanity Fair is brilliant because it isn’t tied to a dated plot, like how well someone will marry. It’s much more interesting than that.”
Given the central role of Becky Sharp in the drama the production will stand or fall based on the performance of one person: the actress who plays her, Olivia Cooke.
As an ambitious young woman from an unfashionable provincial town who turned her back on her unpromising beginnings to forge a successful career in a competitive new environment, she appears to be tailor-made for the role.
After all, the above description could almost be a description of Becky Sharp herself. Born and raised in Oldham, Cooke, 24, moved to the US several years ago in order to avoid being held back by casting directors’ snobbery over her northern accent. After landing a meaty part in TV series Bates Motel and a starring role in Steven Speilberg’s blockbuster Ready Player One, which took £450million at the box office, Cooke has returned to her homeland in triumph as a very bankable leading lady.
Not that she wasn’t a little overawed at first. “Everyone has their version of Becky Sharp in their head. She is so beloved. So after the joy of getting the role I felt an impending dread… You want to get it right but you also don’t want to repeat versions of Becky that have been done before.”
The good news is that she gets a thumbs-up from her co-star Clunes. “Olivia is fabulous,” he says. “She’s a great actor, so focused and strong. It was a treat to work with her.”
And, if the trailer for the series is anything to go by, the director James Strong has grasped the need to do things a little differently.
Cooke sits in a gilded Louis Quatorze chair wearing a bright red evening gown and languidly places a well-shod foot on a globe standing on the floor in front of her as the words “Their world, her rules” flash up on the screen.
But perhaps the most telling aspect of the 30-second teaser is the soundtrack that accompanies it: White Flag by Bishop Briggs. Quite apart from the fact that the director has ditched the traditional accompaniment of a string quartet in favour of an edgy rock song, the lyrics are highly evocative.
“I’d rather die than give up the fight,” snarls the Scottish-born singer. The message being that Becky Sharp is one scarlet woman who, in her battle with high society, will never raise the “white flag”.
It all points to a refreshingly modern take on a story which has a central character who was way ahead of her time.