THE LUMINARIES
BBC1, SUNDAY 21 JUNE, 9PM
Eleanor Catton’s massive 2013 novel, which won the Booker Prize, was structured around 12 chapters, featured the voices of 12 different characters, and somehow revolved around the 12 signs of the zodiac. It was also a murder mystery set on the west coast of New Zealand in the 1860s during a gold rush. Now, the fiendishly complicated 800-plus pages have been adapted by Catton herself into this lavish six-parter, which has been promoted from BBC2 to BBC1, in recognition of the fact it could well be a Sunday night period-drama hit, such is its intriguing premise.
SIMPLER TIMES
Luckily, Catton has simplified her own book to focus more closely on its central mystery – the murder of a recluse whose body is found in a local cottage, and how it’s connected to the disappearance of British gold prospector Emery Staines and Anna Wetherell, the woman he befriends on the voyage over. In particular, she hones in on Anna (played by Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson), as she tries to forge a new life in the town of Hokitika in 1865. When she sees Emery (Himesh Patel from Yesterday) on the ship, there’s an instant spark between them and they agree to meet up once they’re settled in their new base. But they’re somehow kept apart, perhaps due to the scheming of fortune teller and astrologer Lydia Wells (Eva Green), who runs a saloon/brothel and takes Anna under her glamorous wing.
PAST SECRETS
While the narrative isn’t as intricate and textured as the novel, it does cut between the arrival of Anna and Emery to New Zealand, and nine months later, when an investigation into the body found in the cottage draws Anna in. It turns out Anna is trying to shake off a past foray into prostitution, and has somehow ended up in the vicinity of the murder scene, seemingly in a drugged-up state. It’s a star-making role for Hewson, while Green (Casino Royale) steals every scene she’s in. But it’s the increasingly enigmatic story that will draw you in. HHHH