What a month for Bristol-born screenwriter Jack Thorne. After picking up no fewer than three Bafta nominations for his work on The Last Panthers, This Is England ’90 and Don’t Take My Baby, Thorne has now been given the task of adapting Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for the BBC.
He called it an “honour and privilege” to be selected for the job, adding: “The His Dark Materials trilogy are vast and glorious books full of beautiful characters. I’m going to work as hard as I can to try and do justice to them.”
Thorne first came onto the TV scene around 2007 when he wrote an episode of Shameless. This was followed by shows such as Skins and Cast Offs before he joined forces with Shane Meadows on the This Is England trilogy. Titles like The Fades, Glue and The Last Panthers confirmed his status as one of the UK’s most in-demand writers – as did a couple of Bafta wins in 2012.
And it’s not just the TV industry that wants him. He has also written the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the screenplay for upcoming Warner Brothers movie The Sandman.
Thorne’s involvement has been given the thumbs up by Pullman, whose Dark Materials books have been published in more than 40 languages and sold 17.5 million copies.
“Jack is a writer of formidable energy and range, and I’ve greatly enjoyed talking to him and learning about his plans for bringing His Dark Materials to the screen. I’m certain he’ll do a superb job and I look forward to seeing the whole project develop as he shapes the story.”
Thorne’s versatility and voluminous output are both hallmarks of his remarkable career to date. His latest TV project, for example, is National Treasure for Channel 4.
A four-part production starring Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and Andrea Riseborough, it examines the impact – both public and private – of accusations of historic sexual offences against a fictional much-loved celebrity.
The quality of the cast attracted to National Treasure is a good indicator of Thorne’s pulling power as a writer. So expect to start seeing some big names getting attached to the His Dark Materials project, which is being made by Bad Wolf.
In other news this week, filming has begun on season six of the BBC’s hit drama Call the Midwife. Commenting on the show, its creator, writer and executive producer Heidi Thomas said: “My passion for the world and characters of Call the Midwife grows stronger with each passing year. Every season brings new stories, new challenges and new triumphs – yet each one feels like a return to a much-loved home, and season six will be no exception.”
That Thomas has had such success with Call the Midwife is no real surprise when you look at her track record. Having come up through the theatre, she began the transition to screenwriting at the start of the last decade.
Her work on Call the Midwife was foreshadowed by BBC drama Lilies, about three girls attempting to make their way in the world in Liverpool in the 1920s. However, it was Thomas’s work on period drama Cranford that really caught the eye, winning her an RTS Award in 2008. Next came a moderately successful reboot of Upstairs Downstairs before the launch of Call the Midwife confirmed Thomas’s reputation.
The new run will start with a Christmas special set in South Africa before returning to the East End of London. “As the team settle back into Poplar, we’ll see them grappling with all the contradictions and opportunities of the early sixties – the beacon of the pill, the shadow of the Kray twins, the lure of independence and the call to duty,” Thomas said. “And time and time again, in an age of change and danger, we will be reminded of the simple power of love.”
Still in the UK, indie producer Playground has announced two more book deals, after last month securing Patrick Kingsley’s book The New Odyssey – The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.
The first is Penguin Random House Books psychological thriller The Widow. Written by Fiona Barton, it follows the wife of a man who is accused and eventually cleared of kidnapping and murdering a child. The second is non-fiction book Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories. Published by John Murray and written by Thomas Grant, it details the life of the celebrated barrister who played a role in numerous controversial UK court cases involving figures such as Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson.
Sophie Gardiner, creative director of Playground UK, said of the titles: “Though one is fiction and the other is non-fiction, both feature striking central characters caught up in stories that speak to the key issues of our time and should appeal to a wide-ranging audience.”
In the US, the big story of the week is that feted showrunner Terence Winter has left HBO’s lavish music industry drama Vinyl ahead of season two.
Winter has a superb track record, previously working with HBO on series such as The Sopranos and having written the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese is also involved with Vinyl). However, there is a general feeling that Vinyl didn’t quite hit the mark. So HBO and Winter have parted company after creative differences about how the show should get back on track.
HBO said: “As we head into the second season, we have decided it is an appropriate time to make a change in the creative direction of the show. We have enjoyed a longtime partnership with Terry Winter and we look forward to our next collaboration with him. We are pleased to welcome Scott Z Burns, executive producer and showrunner, and Max Borenstein, executive producer, as the new team helming the show.”
Burns is best known for The Bourne Ultimatum, though more recent credits include 2016’s Deep Water and 2011’s Contagion. Borenstein, meanwhile, wrote the screenplays for the most recent Godzilla film and the forthcoming Kong: Skull Island. He was also involved in Fox’s ultimately unsuccessful TV version of hit sci-fi movie Minority Report.
Finally, more than 90 writers from Mississippi including John Grisham and Donna Tartt have signed a statement calling for the repeal of the state’s new anti-gay religious freedom bill.
“Mississippi has a thousand histories,” says the statement. “But these can be boiled down to two strains: our reactionary side, which has nourished intolerance and degradation and brutality, which has looked at difference as a threat, which has circled tightly around the familiar and the monolithic; and our humane side, which treasures compassion and charity and a wide net of kinship, which is fascinated by character and story, which is deeply involved in the daily business of our neighbours. This core kindness, the embracing of wildness and weirdness, is what has nurtured the great literature that has come from our state.”
tagged in: BBC, Call the Midwife, Channel 4, Fiona Barton, HBO, Heidi Thomas, His Dark Materials, Jack Thorne, Max Borenstein, National Treasure, Philip Pullman, Playground Entertainment, Scott Z Burns, Terence Winter, Thomas Grant, Vinyl