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The Dom Post’s TV reviewer says UKTV’s new Father Brown, on Sundays, has everything the Agatha Christie fan could wish for – the cosy villages, eccentric characters, cottage gardens and sly secrets – only its lead character, an unassuming Catholic priest, is quite without the excessive mannerisms that, at least in the case of Hercule Poirot,
The original G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, were about a mild-mannered priest who solves crimes because he understands man’s sinful nature.
Chesterton used the stories as a vehicle to comment on society.
The first of present series uses mostly newly written material, but Mark Williams, as Brown, takes no liberties with the character, who is understatedly quizzical and likeable.
Of course, there are some difficulties in transitioning Chesterton’s famous priest-detective from the page to the small screen. As Michael Newton noted a day after the series began on the BBC, Chesterton’s protagonist is so humble a character, so unconcerned about his own self, that it’s hard to make a show that focuses directly on him
The present series has had to make certain changes in order to “work” for television. Father Brown makes a more direct transition to the centre of the stories. Moreover, the tales are reconfigured to take place in one small English village in the 1950′s. As a result, the great French detective Valentine (Chesterton’s initial foil) becomes an English detective, rather than a world-renowned investigator. But then, such changes are to be expected: all translation is by necessity interpretation and re-creation.
After all, as starring actor (and self-described “pantheistic humanist”) Mark Williams himself explains, Father Brown is not simply another television detective:
[Father Brown] has a huge appetite for the detail of life and for humanity, and he cares very much about people’s souls. That’s the most interesting thing about him as a sleuth: it’s not him solving a conundrum or a crossword, he’s dealing with what he sees as people’s eternal damnation. And when he works it out, the sky turns black and is full of harpies; he’s desperately committed to his morality.
Fr Brown screens on UKTV on Sunday nightys at 10:oopm
Source
- Gene Veith Pathos.com
- Dom Post
- Image: UKTV
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