Book vs. Adaptation: Birdsong

It seems that the opening episode of Birdsong, despite getting 6 million viewers, didn't wow very many people. It lost 0.7 million viewers last night. I, personally, enjoyed it - Eddie Redmayne aside. Although the structure, alternating between past and present, didn't entirely work for me.

Abi Morgan wrote the screenplay, (she's behind two Oscar hopefuls this year (The Iron Lady and Shame), but was not the first person to try. The novel was published in 1993 and, like War Horse, it even made it to the stage before TV (directed by the brilliant Trevor Nunn and starring the lovely Ben Barnes). I saw it just over a year ago and it was great - the scenes in the tunnels were particularly good and had much more humour than the BBC version.

As with most adaptions, Morgan played around ever so slightly with the plot and I'd say, as great as she is, Poesy was a bit young as Isabelle. The basis, though, was there and it captured some of the novel's most memorable scenes perfectly for me. I won't go in much detail so as not to ruin it but generally the characters were well-done, it was filmed beautifully and the acting was spot on (even if I did, on occasion, chuckle at Wraysford's slow motion smoldering stares...). The second half, I thought, was better than the first and completely determined to make me cry! The film's treatment of the WW1 front line was impeccable; the roll call following battle and the tunnel scenes were scarily convincing and had me holding my breath and stifling back tears.

In the end, I think I probably did enjoy the book more but they did do a great job.
If anyone hasn't seen it, I'd recommend it - but don't go watching the first episode with your mum... and don't go seeing Shame either... Morgan writes some pretty vivid sex scenes...