BBC and Working Title team with Richie Mehta on A Passage to India adaptation

SXSW: The BBC and Working Title Television have partnered with Delhi Crime filmmaker Richie Mehta for an adaptation of EM Forster’s A Passage to India that promises to turn the classic novel “on its head.”

Richie Mehta

The prodco’s head of drama Surian Fletcher-Jones has revealed early details of the five-part project, with Canadian Mehta writing and directing all episodes of a series that will tell Forster’s story “from an Indian point of view.”

The 1924 novel is set against the backdrop of British rule in India, as two English women arrive in the fictional Indian town of Chandrapone and meet physician Dr Aziz. It was previously adapted as a movie by director David Lean in 1984.

Nisha Parti at Parti Productions is also understood to be a coproduction partner on the series.

“Richie is Indian by heritage so it is completely turning that novel on its head and doing it from the Indian point of view,” Fletcher-Jones said. “It’s a beautiful piece. He’s writing and directing it all. It’s just been an incredibly development journey to go on because it’s been about emboldening him.

“We’re not making A Passage to India. We’re making Richie Mehta’s A Passage to India and helping him have the confidence to go as far with that as possible and inhabit his own point of view on that story. It’s reclaiming colonial history.”

Fletcher-Jones was speaking at SXSW London on Thursday, where she took part in a panel titled Global Stories: What Makes Compelling TV? Fellow guests included Sue Gibbs, head of development at Heyday Television, and Noemi Spanos, creative director of Carnival Films, with moderator Beatrice Springborn, president of Universal International Studios (UIS) and UCP.

Working Title, Heyday and Carnival are all part of NBCUniversal-owned UIS stable of UK prodcos.

Fletcher-Jones also previewed Lena Dunham’s Netflix comedy Too Much, which is due to launch in July, while Gibbs revealed Heyday has just attached a US showrunner to The Birds, its adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s novella that also inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name.

She also talked up the upcoming third season of BBC conspiracy thriller The Capture, which fits Heyday’s “sweet spot” between prestige and commercial drama. Spanos discussed upcoming psychological thriller All Her Fault, which stars Succession’s Sarah Snook and is being produced by Carnival for US streamer Peacock.

On the subject of making compelling TV, Gibbs said she looks for “great, engaging characters and a narrative that pulls you through the series.”

“It is feelings,” said Flecther-Jones. “Every show an audience ends up loving has a familial relationship at the core. If it’s a workplace drama, you’re watching those characters as if they’re a family. Or there’s something romantic, or its father-and-son. That core dynamic between characters is what keeps people watching a show. There’s a difference between what keeps people watching and what brings them to it in the first place. It’s surprising, lift the lid on a world, tell me something new or exciting.”

“For me, it’s escapism,” added Spanos. “Whatever the route to escapism is, life is tough, life is boring. Even when we’re reading books or scripts we can escape into another place. It needs to be a place you want to be, [with] characters that pull you through.”

But while the TV industry is facing a difficult time, “it’s business as usual but absolutely one is adapting,” said Gibbs. Heyday is continuing to look for IP in terms of older books or classic TV shows, while trying to be “more fleet of foot” by going out to buyers with just a pitch, rather than commissioned scripts. “It’s [about] making those adjustments.”

“It’s consolidating, but also quite conservative,” said Spanos, who has confronted the dilemma of how to keep creating original drama in a risk-averse market. “For us at Carnival, we have been leaning on IP but there’s opportunities in new developments with writers with original ideas. They’re writing on a bigger canvas; their ideas are noisy to cut through. For us it’s a bit more challenging on smaller things, but originality is still there. It can’t be too small.”

“At the moment it’s all about returning series, IP, and what’s going to bring in audiences,” Fletcher-Jones added. “It’s not a risk-taking environment. There are constraints. But you have to follow your gut. Otherwise you lose your way. Lots of people have lost their jobs, lots of shows aren’t getting commissioned. It is quite a scary time.”