After a 20-year absence from British TV, Sir Tom Stoppard returns to the small screen next year with his five-part adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's novel, Parade's End, on BBC Two. When the BBC approached Stoppard (pictured) with the idea two years ago, he had never read the book, but says that it "has been my preoccupation since then. The title covers a quartet of books set among the upper class in Edwardian England, mostly from 1911 to the end of the Great War."
Central to the story is the love triangle between the aristocratic Christopher Tietjens, his wife Sylvia and the young suffragette Valentine Wannop. Piers Wenger, Executive Producer of BBC Wales Drama, says that "Parade's End is Ford Madox Ford's masterpiece, and the BBC is immensely privileged to have a dramatist of Sir Tom Stoppard's extraordinary calibre to bring it to life."The Ford adaptation will be a cornerstone of the BBC's season of programmes celebrating the novel. Another highlight will be Faulks on Fiction (BBC Two), in which Sebastian Faulks tells the story of the British novel through the character archetypes of The Lover, The Hero, The Villain and The Snob. In addition there will be the three-part series In Their Own Words: British Novelists (BBC Four), featuring rare archive material of Britain's greatest novelists talking about their life and work, and Sue Perkins presenting a Culture Show Special called The Books We Really Read on BBC Two. Transmission dates have not yet been finalised.
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