Some books are difficult to film, and TV is a fool to attempt them. Others, however, perch on the shelf poised and preened, all dressed up and ready for the small screen. Amor Towles’s 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow could have been designed as a handsome, charming period drama, of the kind that once slid smoothly on to BBC One or ITV1 on a Sunday evening. It’s actually on Paramount+, but is handsome and charming and Sunday-ish still.
It remains to be seen whether Paramount takes advantage of the fact that the novel’s early chapters create a setup that could run on TV indefinitely, or whether it renders roughly the same amount of narrative as the book then bids us adieu. But that setup is this: in Moscow in 1921, four years after the revolution, the country’s disfranchised aristocracy face summary trials and executions. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov (Ewan McGregor) – Sasha to his friends, “Your Excellency” to the dwindling minority of Russians who still recognise honorifics – seems to be next, but is saved from death by the surprising fact that he is the credited author of a seminal revolutionary poem.
