MovieChat Forums > Zen (2011) Discussion > Dibdin turning in his grave?

Dibdin turning in his grave?

posted 12 years ago by wordcraft
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It is probably a good thing, except for his family and friends, that Michael Dibdin is not around any longer to witness what was done in his name with the three Aurelio Zen novels.

I have read several of Dibdin's Zen books over the years and enjoyed them and the name character, but the BBC production left me cold and distinctly puzzled. Cabal in particular bore no resemblance whatsoever to the original novel, rendered the Vatican aspect to a bare minimum, introduced random characters left right and centre, largely to justify a perceived need to create a "bad civil servant" counterforce to the detective, and also shaved a good twenty years off Aurelio Zen's age and brushed up his crumpled appearance into some kind of Roman James Bond figure. The novel was largely unrecognisable, and not through any of the normal issues of condensing a book into a 90-minute television drama. It was simply steamrollered.

The series is slick in its way, though overly like a classic "tourist promotion" drama in my view, but I was left feeling that the producers merely found it convenient to stick the label of a best-selling novelist on their product, regardless of the fact that it had very different ingredients. It may be that the version I saw was crucially cut for a time-slot, but I also notice other posters were shaking their heads at plot-lines left unexplained on a level last seen in The Singing Detective, a work that at least had the excuse of being partly the hospital-bed hallucinations of the narrator.

What was the reason this time?

[–] uisliu 12 years ago

Zen was a very expensive project and, even had the production company been able to afford such locations as St. Peter's, it is highly unlikely that they would have received the co-operation of the Vatican to stage a death by falling from above the Balacchino. Nor would they have won any friends in the Vatican with the book's plot line. Given that a fundamental change had to be made to the plot at the very beginning, the writer would have then found that impacting repeatedly in the plot twists and turns.

On a practical level, the writer had to simplify the plot that Dibdin wrote as something of an homage to Eco's Foucault's Pendulum to fit into the programmed length and, given these constraints, I don't think he did a bad job. I do tend to agree that Cabal has proved less satisfactory on TV than in the book but, if one hadn't read the book, I would suggest that it would stand up alongside the other two episodes.

Only one thing puzzles me is why they took these first three books in the series out of order, making the first, Ratking, the third in the series. This forced more juggling of plot lines so that instead of a climax in the love affair story arc coming in Cabal, this was played out in Ratking.

On the whole, given the complexity of the novels, I found this series an imaginative and impressive version. The laying over of a neo-60s chic styling I thought particularly clever. Given that the series has evidently proved far too expensive for the BBC to bother with further, I hope the producers find other companies willing to take it up for a second foray. If it doesn't return, I hope it will not mean that we'll lose Rufus Sewell to the small screen.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 10 years ago

wordcraft - I agree completely. I wish, in a way, that Dibdin had lived to pass comment on the farcical adaptation of 3 of his Zen novels. In particular what he would have made of the way they portray Aurelio Zen.

As an extra to the dvd set there is a docu on the making of the series with various people involved in the production speaking about its conception and development. It seemd quite clear to me that none of them understood the character of Zen. Most had not read any of the novels and those that did, read only one or two. Sewell says he began his research of the character with wikipedia! Sadly Sewell was the only one, who with two of his comments, showed some insight or sense of Zen that resonated with the character in the novel.

I think they got carried away with the whole venture and forgot that the series was meant to be based on a series of books. In particular one of the team, a screen writer or the director (can't remember which), said they wanted to make the tone of the series "wry". Why? That's not the tone of the books at all even though it has some great humour, of the most ironic kind, but certainly not wry or whimsical, which is what I felt especially given the incidental music.

What a waste! I hope an Italian TV station decides to adapt the series. The ones who did the Montalbano series would do. And please can we have Italian actors playing the Italian roles. The actors of the Zen series played them as English versions of Italians.

The distance is nothing. The first step is the hardest.