 Commercially successful and critically acclaimed, Andrew Davies is one of
television's most sought-after writers. Despite being best-known for the
seemingly anonymous form of literary adaptation, he brings a personal voice both
to his neglected original dramas and his respected adaptations.
Born in Cardiff on 20 September 1936, he graduated in 1957 with an
English degree from University College London and taught at schools and then
Universities. Despite radio and theatre credits, his early progress in
television was slow: after Who's Going To Take Me On? (BBC, tx. 8/2/1967) for
the Wednesday Play strand that had inspired him to become a writer, he did not
consistently sell full-length work until the 1970s, while working at the
University of Warwick. A lover of literature, he combined teaching with
writing until going full-time in 1987, aged 50.
His 1970s work is marked by versatility. Is That Your Body, Boy? (BBC,
tx. 9/5/1970), a play about a disciplinarian PE teacher struggling to adapt to
changing educational practices, was almost stylised in action and dialogue,
while A Martyr to the System (BBC, tx. 2/4/1976) also explored education through
a student teacher at a comprehensive. Early adaptations included dramatised
extracts for Second House (BBC, 1973-76), The Water Maiden (BBC, tx. 10/3/1974) for the
fantasy-reinvention strand Bedtime Stories and skilled versions of Edgar Allen
Poe's The Imp of the Perverse (BBC, 1975) and Charles Dickens' ghost story The
Signalman (BBC, 1976). Biographical pieces included Cowboy in the White House
(1977) for educational series The Prizewinners, a serial on Karl Marx's youngest
daughter, Eleanor Marx (BBC, 1977), a dramatisation of Jean Renoir's Renoir, My
Father (BBC, 1978) and the non-naturalistic Fearless Frank (BBC, tx. 4/10/1978)
about Frank Harris. At the turn of the decade Davies wrote ambitious
thirteen-part serials: co-production The Legend of King Arthur (BBC, 1979) and
To Serve Them All My Days (BBC, 1980-81), one of his R.F. Delderfield
adaptations, in which he returned to educational settings and established a
willingness to reshape material.
His versatility accommodated work for children - books and series including
Educating Marmalade (ITV, 1982-84) and The Boot Street Band (BBC, 1993-94) - and
the adult sitcom Game On! (BBC, 1995-98), co-written with Bernadette Davis. This sitcom underlined Davies's acerbic wit and sexually-charged, nuanced
characterisation. These features sparkled throughout his inventive University satire A Very Peculiar Practice (BBC, 1986-88), a landmark series packed with
memorable one-liners and characters in an all-too-plausible catalogue of Higher
Education mismanagement. Other original pieces included A Few Short Journeys of
the Heart (BBC, tx. 10/8/1994), a challenging studio play (derived from Davies's
Dirty Faxes short story collection) conflating authorship, identity, sexuality
and memory in a psychological space akin to Dennis Potter. It may seem as though
the distinctive voice in these pieces - tonal complexity, postmodernism and dark
humour - was lost as Davies concentrated upon literary adaptation.
However, this neglects his craft as a writer-adapter able to move between the
jovially satirical Lucky Sunil (BBC, tx. 17/4/1988), the darkly psychological
Mother Love (BBC, 1989) and the audacious reworking of political thriller House
of Cards (BBC, 1990) and sequels To Play the King (BBC1, 1993) and The Final Cut
(BBC, 1995), over which Davies gained greater influence than original novelist
Michael Dobbs (which is partly reflected in Dobbs's sequels).
BBC Drama in the 1990s prioritised such modern dramas over the literary
adaptations and costume drama craved by Davies. He was steered away from Jane
Austen for George Eliot's Middlemarch (BBC, 1994) with its clearer
socio-political resonances. However, its success brought the commission for
Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995), whose joyful confidence (with Davies keen to
avoid the beautiful but rigorously stately visual style of Middlemarch)
contributed to its enormous success.
He has become synonymous with distinctively personal approaches to
'classic' adaptations. His approaches can involve highlighting sexual tensions
(as his critics are keen to dwell upon) but he also reshapes or invents scenes
where he feels the original novelist was restricted. His statements about
'improving' originals (apart from the 'perfect' Austen) raise eyebrows, but
academic studies stress that approaches to adaptations that focus on 'fidelity'
are anyway dangerously reductive. While honouring the spirit of the original,
he has described adaptation as interpretation akin to teaching from another
angle, or having conversations with texts that still exist for others to
interpret. His style is sufficiently recognisable for television profiles
including a South Bank Show (ITV, tx. 17/11/2002) and a long interview with
Clive Anderson (BBC, tx. 16/12/2003).
Despite cinema credits such as Bridget Jones's Diary (US/France/UK, d. Sharon
Maguire, 2001), Davies prioritises television because it respects writers.
Selected highlights from his prolific later career demonstrate his impact:
costume dramas with tabloid-overheating sexual content such as Moll Flanders
(ITV, 1996) and Tipping the Velvet (BBC, 2002) and confident reworkings of
Thackeray and Trollope in Vanity Fair (BBC, 1998) and The Way We Live Now (BBC,
2001) respectively. Davies tackled Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils (BBC, 1992) and
Take a Girl Like You (BBC, 2000), wrote a pulsating modern variation on
Shakespeare's Othello (ITV, tx. 23/12/2001) and, with Doctor Zhivago (ITV,
2002), contended with Boris Pasternak's novel and David Lean's film. Returning
to Dickens, Davies adapted Daniel Deronda (BBC, 2002) and serialised Bleak House
(BBC, 2005) into a hugely successful period soap.
Recent work includes heartfelt pieces on British social shifts: The Line of
Beauty (BBC, 2006) adapting Alan Hollinghurst's Thatcher-era novel, and The
Chatterley Affair (BBC, tx. 20/3/2006), an original play about jurors at the
1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover trial. Broadcasters covet Davies's profile: Deronda
and Zhivago were scheduled against each other, and though ITV held his adaptation
of Northanger Abbey (ITV, tx. 25/3/2007) for eight years before shooting it, it was almost poached
by the BBC before ITV created an Austen season around it. His
originality and verve produce not simply reinterpretations of literature but
truly modern television drama.
Dave Rolinson
Further reading
Sarah Cardwell, Andrew Davies (Manchester University Press, 2005).
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