Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_11 Blackadder_ok

THE MOTHER OF
THE MOTHER OF
If the prospect of six murders, two seductions and three tragic deaths isn’t already appetising enough then also add high comedy and low cunning to what the producers are justifiably calling “a classic drama for the Millennium.” As well as all that mayhem - not to mention a cast of thousands - there is quite literally hovering over a tale of adventure and foul play Gormenghast itself, the crumbling castle that gives wonderfully expressive title to this lavish £10 million four-hour epic which will air on BBC2 from January.
Ye s , G o r m e n g h a s t , a u t h o r M e r v y n P e a k e ’ s famous literary creation, casting shadows of “time- eaten buttresses, broken and lofty turrets and most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints” which arise “like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry” and point “blasphemously at heaven.”
Fans of Peake’s fantastical trilogy - Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959) - will need no reminding of its strange claustrophobic landscape of decaying aristocracy, bizarre servants and, of course, the ambitious young kitchen boy Steerpike with ideas well above his station.
When Andy Wilson (Cracker, Psychos, An Evening With Gary Lineker), the award-winning direc- tor of this long-awaited adaptation, first read and immediately fell in love with the trilogy as a 15-year- old in the early 70s, Peake had already been dead five years, just one year less than it has taken Wilson finally to realise what has clearly been a labour of love.
Wilson and his then producer Gub Neal had just been shooting the second series of Cracker when they began to exchange ideas about what they might do next together. It turned out they both loved Gormenghast, and when they contacted the Peake family it transpired that “they were just about at the end of their tether with promises to make a Hollywood film and were starting to think it would never get made.” Wilson and Neal - who would have to quit the project when he graduated to a top drama job at Channel 4 - successfully convinced the family they could do it, especially after the BBC came enthu- siastically on board too.
Wilson’s new producer was Estelle Daniel, then
in a top development role at the Beeb, with whom he had worked on a BBC2 three-parter called The Mushroom Picker. With the rights firmly secured - and regularly renewed after that biannually - they set about finding a writer for this awesome assignment, eventually settling on Malcolm McKay.
Said Wilson: “He went on his own personal jour- ney of Gormenghast madness for three years and came up with some superb scripts. The draft we shot is more or less his fifth. It has to be the most expen- sive drama the BBC has ever done in hourage terms. Each episode [it’s four times one hour] is like a low budget British feature.”
McKay’s teleplay covers the first two books only and, according to Wilson, “follows the plotline of the
Turning Gormenghast into a £10m
Photo main: camera operator Mike Proudfoot (behind the camera) prepares for a scene; above: first assistant director David Mason (with feline friend) on the set of Gormenghast.
EXPOSURE • 8 & 9