Andrew Davies, Britain’s most successful literary adaptor for television, has vowed to dispel the idea of John Updike being a misogynist when he tackles the author’s Rabbit series of novels.
Davies is best known for the lavish and acclaimed productions of classic novels such as Doctor Zhivago, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace and the forthcoming Les Misérables.
But he revealed to the Hay literary festival in Wales that his next project will be the series of novels which follow, from the 1960s onwards, the character of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, an everyman ex-high school basketball star who feels trapped by marriage and fatherhood.
The project comes with something of a mission. “This lazy way that people talk about him being a misogynist,” Davies said. “This is something we are just going to wipe out really when they see just how richly empathetic and imaginative the books are.”
Updike, who died in 2009, was the supreme chronicler of ordinary American life. His first Rabbit novel, Rabbit Run, was published in 1960, and his last, Rabbit at Rest, in 1990.
Rabbit is a sometimes monstrous, selfish character. He leaves his pregnant wife at the start of the novel and later moves in with a sex worker.
The project raises the question of how, in the era of #MeToo, TV and film-makers should depict behaviour which would not be acceptable now.
The script editor Laura Lankester said there was no getting around the fact that people in the 1960s behaved the way they did, and there was a balancing act in not denying it and portraying it in an acceptable way for a contemporary audience.
Davies said: “I think they behave exactly the same now, but it is kind of wrong now.”
The 81-year-old said he had the advantage of working with much younger people than himself, including a script editor on Rabbit Run who is in her mid-20s. “She has had problems with some bits of Rabbit Run and it has been very interesting to deal with all that,” he said.
“We do want people, if not to love Rabbit but at least to understand him. Some of the things have been a bit difficult for young intelligent females to cope with … but I think his insight into both men and women is just so extraordinary.”
Davies was at Hay to talk about his more immediate adaptation, Victor Hugo’s epic story of social injustice Les Misérables.
It will be shown on the BBC One later this year with a cast that includes David Oyelowo as Javert, Dominic West as Jean Valjean, Olivia Colman as Madame Thenardier, Josh O’Connor as Marius and Lily Collins as Fantine.
Other TV projects include an adaptation of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and then, he hopes, a mash-up of the novels of Alison Lurie. Davies says he plans to continue what he does at least until he was 90. “I’ve bought a new car, so I plan to at least get my money’s worth out of that.”