Here’s the thing. The BBC already has a great adaptation of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. Back in 2002, John Dryden dramatised, produced, and directed an all Indian cast in a six hour radio drama for BBC Radio 4. Recorded on location in Pune and Mumbai, the production was done entirely outside of the studio, and the audio was taped as the actors physically acted out the story on location. The sound we heard was authentic – their voices, their movement, and even the textures of the world around them.
The production was an unqualified delight. One that transported you to another time and place with such ease that the only way you could have had a more authentic experience was if you lived through it yourself. While the radio adaptation wasn’t quite complete (how could six hours possibly be enough to tell all of the novel’s 1,488 pages?), it nevertheless managed to capture the spirit of Vikram Seth’s story.
That said, I was nevertheless very excited to see what the book would look like through Mira Nair’s bright and penetrating lens.
A Suitable Boy which centres around the story of a widow looking to recapture some semblance of family glory by marrying off her youngest daughter to the “right” man, set at the birth of a new nation, with all of its chaos, and conflict, and opportunity, complete with a colourful cast of characters, was always a novel that was ripe for adaptation. It was also an endeavour that was next to impossible.
The novel is the very definition of epic. A massive Bombay talkie that takes its readers from family courtyards, through the hallowed halls of academia, into government, the courts, religious processions, and bloody riots, is so vivid and richly detailed in its sweep and spread that it makes adapting The Lord of the Rings look like a walk in the park.
With these six episodes, Mira Nair does, for the most part, a very competent job. And I assure you that I’m not damning it with faint praise. Everything in this series has been devised to pull you into it. The production design is expansive. The costumes are warm, textured, and sumptuous. The cinematography maps out India in a way that is completely and utterly immersive. And the music, composed by Alex Heffes, and accompanied by Anoushka Shankar and Kavita Seth, is very much a mood.
And while a lot of the dialogue felt contrived, and the acting theatrical, I found myself nevertheless engaged with this world. It isn’t perfect. Not by any measure. But it’s a good enough way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Ever since the series premiered on BBC One back in August, there have been quite a few criticisms levelled against it. From being almost entirely in the English language to suffering from a post-colonial hangover, they were easy broadsides against any English production about the former colonies. They are also unbelievably lazy readings of the work in question.
A Suitable Boy is, after all, a story that is set in post-independence, post-partition India, after almost a hundred years of divide and rule, about a population that’s in the midst of discovering its own identity and place in the world. There isn’t any nostalgia here. Mira Nair isn’t making an argument towards the positive legacy of Pax Britannica. She’s painting a picture of pluralism and the kind of conflict it breeds. If there’s any sense of yearning at all, it is for an idealism that seems all but lost in our modern era.
Even the use of the English language felt apt. These are, after all, characters who use the language to reinforce their stature in society. I found their stilted accents and code switching reflective of who they were. A fact that was highlighted by how they would revert to speaking in their mother tongue either when dealing with the “lower classes” or in moments of great stress.
My criticisms of the show run in a different direction. I had less of a problem with what was on screen than I did with what was left out.
Much like the BBC 4 radio drama, Mira Nair also limits herself to a six hour runtime. And while she may have managed to channel many of the prevailing ideas in Vikram Seth’s story, she fails to reflect its scope. While she checks off many important plot points along the way, she sacrifices far too much by way of character and motivation. Something that becomes all the more apparent in the magnificent last episode which unfortunately doesn’t feel in any way earned.
A Suitable Boy remains one of the longest single volumes ever written in the English language. Unlike many similar epics, it is a book that is immediately accessible and incredibly absorbing, deftly avoiding many of the pretensions that often come hand-in-hand with “literary fiction.”
Watching this, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a series that was doomed by the decision to have it be just six episodes long. I kept wishing that it was given the same treatment as Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, yet another overwrought literary work that was allowed the time to breathe with a multi-season approach to telling its story. These are characters that need to grow. Who need the space to slowly develop and become the beating heart of the story. Here, a hasty screenplay and breakneck editing, meant that we got from point A to point B, but without any of the precision or poetry of the original text.
A Suitable Boy
BBC One/Netflix, Limited Series, 6 episodes
Director: Mira Nair
Writer: Andrew Davies
Cast: Tabu, Ishaan Khatter, Tanya Maniktala, Rasika Dugal, Mahira Kakkar, Ram Kapoor, Gagan Dev Riar, Danesh Razvi, and Mikhail Sen
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