#Misery street pbs series#

I suddenly understood this man, born to criminal parents in a prison and filled with loathing for that world. Javert believes criminals are born that way, and Valjean is evidence that criminals are products of their environments.ĭAVID OYELOWO My first interaction with “Les Mis” was with the musical, and when I read Andrew Davies’s script, it seemed very apparent that I could bring real layering and complexity to this character, who in the musical is a much more one-dimensional villain. Valjean’s belief that he doesn’t deserve anyone’s love in the real world is central to his sense of self, and that is an important political point. I realized that anyone who is brutalized and treated like an animal eventually becomes that. That they are alter egos, in a way, was the biggest clue to why Valjean felt so guilty, so unworthy. It’s a modern, reductionist view to bring it down to that, and we didn’t emphasize it. It always helps to bring things down to love and sex, and I think there is a homoerotic thing going on, perhaps the love of the jailer for his prisoner. JavertĭOMINIC WEST The first question is obviously, what is Javert’s problem? Why is he so obsessed with Valjean? You do wonder what’s going on there, and we sort of hinted at it in one glance where I am naked in front of him when is released from the prison hulks.

#Misery street pbs series#

In a series of conversations, Davies, Shankland and a few of the principal actors talked about three important aspects of the mini-series that set it apart from the musical. When he discovers that one of his former factory workers, Fantine, has become destitute after being fired, he adopts her daughter, Cosette, who is living with the evil Thenardiers ( Olivia Colman and Adeel Akhtar in the series). Brutalized by his jail time, he is transformed through an act of kindness, and becomes a wealthy and respected citizen, with a new identity.

The story (skip ahead if you are one of the millions who have seen a previous incarnation) begins with Jean Valjean (played here by Dominic West), a peasant who has almost finished his sentence of 19 years hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread for his starving relatives. “It very much reinforced my idea that we needed a proper, old-fashioned long-form television adaptation.” “I thought the musical a very feeble representation of the book,” said Andrew Davies (“ Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “War and Peace”), who wrote the screenplay for the new series. Unsurprisingly, the musical, which got a lavish Hollywood adaptation in 2012, focuses mainly on the central characters and plot lines. (The aptly dreary set here, in a dilapidated, gloomy former prison, might as well have sported a sign saying “Likely to Perish Within.”) Set in a grimly realist France, its abundant starving poor and oppressed are entirely disconnected from the wealthy classes. This version hews much more closely to Hugo’s book, a five-volume, 365-chapter novel that over the course of its complex plot explores history, law, politics, religion and ideas about justice, guilt and redemption. There is not much that’s looking up for any character in Victor Hugo’s epic 1862 novel “Les Misérables,” which has provided the subject matter for dozens of theater, television and film adaptations, most famously the blockbuster musical that zillions of fans affectionately call “Les Miz.”īut this six-part television adaptation, which first aired in Britain from December to February and arrives on Masterpiece on Sunday, might come as a surprise to those who only know the musical. Collins, who was playing the ill-fated Fantine.

“Listen, my deathbed scene was on Day 2,” said Ms. “Sorry, Lily, just one more time,” said Tom Shankland, the director of the new adaptation of “ Les Misérables,” a coproduction with BBC and PBS’s Masterpiece.

The camera moved in for a close-up of her pale, anxious face. Vilvoorde, Belgium - Lily Collins, dressed in a mud-colored linen shift, tried to hide the small piece of jewelry she had crafted, as a hatchet-faced factory supervisor approached.