The BBC’s mini-series spin on Les Misérables is coming in 2019, and a new trailer is here to strike all of the beloved and heart-wrenching Les Mis notes. Only there’s no singing.
If you’re just joining us, the BBC’s adaptation is working from Victor Hugo’s classic novel, not the stage musical—there’ll be no famous songs from Schönberg/Boublil like “I Dreamed a Dream” or “One Day More.” No singing as far as we know, though this could change: in Hugo’s Les Misérables, people are breaking out into historical song constantly. So we’ll have to wait and see.
While screenwriter Andrew Davies’ early comments suggested we’ll be getting an even grittier and sexed-up Les Misérables (if such things are possible), the glimpses from the trailer above are a montage of mostly well-known moments that will feel as familiar to people who love the musical as book aficionados.
We open with Les Amis de l’ABC—that is, the young revolutionaries—on their barricade, events that come towards the end of the story, before flashing back in time. There’s a lot of emphasis in the trailer on Lily Collins’ youthful Fantine, and I’m hoping the mini-series really fleshes out Fantine’s role and what happens to her.
That we see Fantine out and about with her treacherous beau Tholomyès (father of Cosette) suggests we might be getting a more well-rounded Fantine than we meet in the musical.
The musical Fantine is already an abandoned single mother struggling to make enough money to pay for her daughter to live with the Thénardiers, before she must turn to prostitution out of desperation. But it seems like we’ll get to see some of Fantine’s carefree pre-Cosette life, either in real time or in flashbacks.
The Thénardiers (Adeel Akhtar and Olivia Colman) are also here in all of their ghastly glory. While the Thénardiers are no doubt villains, they’re also more complicated (and central to the plot) than the musical ever gets to explore, so I hope we’ll also be seeing that, especially with such accomplished actors embodying them.
I’m hoping their fascinating, heroic, tragic children Éponine (Erin Kellyman) and Gavroche (Reece Yates) get their time in the sun. These two are, in my estimation, the bravest characters in all of Les Misérables. Maybe there’ll even be something for their sister Azelma to do! Poor Azelma, constantly forgotten. At least she lives.
Primary protagonist and notorious bread-stealer Jean Valjean (Dominic West) and his antagonist, the indomitable police Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) look to be in fine form. Both of these men are fantastic actors, and I’m especially excited to see what Oyelowo does with Javert—talk about a multifaceted character who doesn’t always get his due.
We also see both young and older Cosette (Ellie Bamber), golden-haired and now sprung from convent life (they’re borrowing from the musical/movie here because Cosette is brown-haired in the book, but I guess that doesn’t look as suitably angelic).
Please, please make Cosette’s love/nascent Bonapartist/budding revolutionary Marius Pontmercy (Josh O’Connor) more than one dimensional—like everyone in Hugo’s Les Misérables, he’s much more than the archetype he’s been reduced to on stage and screen.
Who else? Oh, yes—both Les Amis’ fiery leader Enjolras (Joseph Quinn) and his obverse, the drunken skeptic Grantaire (Turlough Convery) are listed in the main cast and present in three episodes. If these two don’t die holding hands, Enjolras/Grantaire shippers the world over are going to set the barricades on fire. Make it queer, BBC. Hugo definitely wanted it this way when he compared Grantaire to like seventy-five homoerotic classical figures.
It looks like we might get to experience the real brutality of the rebellion’s fighting in Paris, and the sets and costumes here look lavish and on-point. The potential for realism has me excited—I may love songs upon the barricade as much as anyone, but to see what these young people actually faced will be something else.
I got pretty emotional by the end of this trailer, because as you may have gleaned, Les Misérables means quite a lot to me. I’m fond of the mini-series tagline: “Where there is love there is hope.” Enjoying that a good bit more than the musical’s incessant “to love another person is to see the face of God,” though don’t tell Bishop Myriel. Did you catch the great Derek Jacobi in action?
(via Broadway World, images: The BBC)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
