Adapting

Birdsong (2012)

Based on the novel of the same name by Sebastian Faulks this two part TV adaptation stars Eddie Redmayne and Clemence Poesy. A young officer in the first world war tries to deal with the death around him and his confused emotions over his past relationship with a French woman.

I have not read the book but it does appear that several sections of the book (those set in the 1970s featuring the main characters grand daughter) have been exercised for this adaptation. While the series is beautifully filmed it does appear to suffer from the same problem that many book to screen adaptations have where the source material is mainly focused on internal conflict and this is hard to translate to the screen. Certainly this is a worth while watch but I suspect that a lot of detail has probably been lost in adaptation.

4/5