Two series of Jeremy Front's adaptations of the Charles Paris Mysteries are available on CD from the BBC.
Adapting Charles Paris
Jeremy Front explains how he came to adapt The Charles Paris Mysteries by Simon Brett for BBC radio.
Radio 4’s comedy drama series The Charles Paris Mysteries kicked-off when I was approached by Executive Producer, Sally Avens. Sally had already directed several of my plays and some Classic Serials I’d dramatised, but the inception of this project was unusual because it already had a star name, if not contractually committed, then at least attached in principle.
Bill Nighy had expressed an interest in playing the louche, lascivious actor-cum-sleuth at the centre of Simon Brett’s novels. I was working on a short piece at the National Theatre with Sally when she asked if I’d read some of the books with a view to taking one as the basis for a single play. It was also at the National that she introduced me to Bill, and he seemed up for the idea.
It was decided that I should update Charles’s world in order to get the maximum comic potential from the life of a hard-drinking, not very successful jobbing actor of a certain age. I also wanted to build on the complicated, semi-detached relationship between Charles and his estranged wife, Frances (played by Suzanne Burden).
Adapting the work of a dead novelist has its own problems, not least of which is making the work your own whilst staying true to the spirit of the original. If I take liberties (and I’m sure have) with Evelyn Waugh or Anton Chekhov, I may incur the wrath of their devotees, but the authors are unlikely to accost me outside Soho House. Simon and I had never met, but I knew he was very much alive and well. I was assured, however, that he (and the BBC) had given me free rein to go with my instincts and take the radio version in whatever direction I felt it should go.
In the end this meant keeping the basic structure of the murder mystery plot, over which I storylined and a whole new parallel narrative for Charles, Frances and Paris’s useless agent, Maurice (Jon Glover). The upshot of so much change was that all the dialogue and Charles’s laconic narrations would be new and original writing.
As I worked on the first 60-minute Saturday Play, the dynamic tension between this central trio strengthened and it soon became clear that these three characters would lie at the heart the comedy and would drive any further instalments, should we get a re-commission.
A Series Of Murders was the first one-off play. It was well received within the BBC and, to my relief, by Simon despite the fact that not a line of dialogue came from the book. After that, the drama department asked if I’d like to do another and gave me the option to repeat the one hour single format or go for a series of four half hours. I opted for the latter, and not just for the obvious reasons. Sally and I felt there was a lot of fun to be mined from the relationships at the centre of the story and the extra time would allow me space to expand Charles’s disastrous private life without sidelining the mystery plot. The first series was Sicken And So Die and as the tone developed I decided that I wanted the music to be an integral part of the storytelling rather than merely incidental stings. It certainly helped set the pace and punctuate the action, but the largely 1960s-era tracks were carefully picked from what I imagined to be Charles’ personal record collection. Charles is a one-time hippy with a rock and roll counterculture back-story and the music reflected that. Sometimes it played with the mood, sometimes it acted as an ironic counterpoint. I have to admit, I have had a lot of enjoyment choosing tracks and matching them to each scene.
Subsequent series have been Murder Unprompted, The Dead Side Of The Mic and the current ‘Cast In Order Of Disappearance. In the process of writing nine hours of this show (to date) I’ve been in the fortunate position of knowing exactly who is going to be speaking my lines. One of the advantages of working with a regular cast is spending time in their company and becoming attuned to their voices and how they relate to one another. The virtue of this is that I know how Bill, Suzanne and Jon will deliver a line and because I can completely trust them, it also allows me to omit dialogue for an eloquent ‘performance moment’.
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