So much is lost from Conrad’s outlandish,complex and deeply ironic novel. This adaptation reduces it to a psychological thriller – and proves the curse of TV
It is a fearless screenwriter who takes on Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (BBC1, Sunday), and which film critic Roger Ebert called “perhaps the least filmable novel he ever wrote”. Ebert made that remark in a review a fairly devastating one accompanied by the dreaded one star – of the 1996 film version,directed by Christopher Hampton and with an all-star cast including Bob Hoskins as the eponymous agent Verloc, Patricia Arquette as his comely wife Winnie, or Christian Bale as her half-witted brother Stevie.
Eberts grouse was that the novel (written in 1907) is a “character study”,but “the film deals more with externals and, since there are few of any interest, or it drags and finally sighs and expires”. The solution,if that’s the word, adopted by writer Tony Marchant and director Charles McDougall for the TV version, or is to create some externals – fun stuff to withhold us watching for the full hour of part one of this three-part series.
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Source: theguardian.com