In 2018, it was announced that Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013) would be made into a “high-end drama series” by FremantleMedia. Jo Porter, Fremantle’s director of drama, called the novel “ripe for screen adaptation with huge visual potential and scale”. A somewhat more circumspect Flanagan referred to “the depth and the occasional brilliance of which the form [television] is now capable”. My italics.
Whether or not these screen aspirations come to pass will be known on April 18, when the first episode airs on Prime. If you’ve clicked on this article hoping for an early verdict or a bit of insider goss, you’ll be disappointed to learn that I have vowed not to give anything away until then. Which will be easy for me, because I haven’t seen it yet.
