David Morrissey (perhaps best known to U.S. audiences as The Governor on The Walking Dead) will play Inspector Tyador Borlú in BBC Two’s forthcoming adaptation of The City & the City. Tony Grisoni (The Young Pope, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams) will adapt China Miéville’s mind-bending novel, about a murder that forces Borlú to move between the overlapping twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma, into a four-part television series.
Since The City & the City was published in 2009, it has been adapted into a stage play (in 2013). The synopsis:
When a murdered woman is found in the city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. To investigate, Borlú must travel from the decaying Besźel to its equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the vibrant city of Ul Qoma. But this is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a seeing of the unseen. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them more than their lives. What stands against them are murderous powers in Besźel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.
“This is a story that explores the way we live together today, set in divided cities where communities live cheek by jowl, choosing what they see and ‘un-see,’” executive producer Preethi Mavahalli said in a press release. “The City & the City is a noir thriller with a fantastical twist which will quite literally break boundaries with its unique take on the murder mystery.”
“It’s been fascinating and moving to witness the translation from fiction to script,” Miéville said, “and to work with Tony [Grisoni] and Tom [Shankland] and everyone on this production. What they’re making feels both familiar, sending me right back to the book, and yet very much their own, something I’m eager to discover. I’m extremely impatient for it!”
Very interesting! I found that book fascinating in the way that it just dropped you into the middle of the story to figure out both the plot and the world at the same time; made for a very different novel on rereading (but equally pleasurable, which is hard). Looking forward to seeing how they handle it on the small screen.
This is actually a story that might work better on the screen than in the book, they could really show the two cities.
Lifeline Theater in Chicago did a stage adaptation a few years ago, using minimal sets and only costume changes to differentiate the cities.
i loved the book, especially how it started feeling like CSI:Bratislava at first, and got weirder and weirder.
Interesting. They could do something really nifty here, visually, e.g. by making people/buildings in the “other” city look blurry or vague.
I read the book recently (my first, but sure not to be my last China Miéville) and thought it was well suited to been adapted to TV, albeit one not to everyone’s taste. I’ll look forward to this one.
No idea how the hell they are going to do this. Good luck to all involved!
I am very excited about this.
Visually, this will be challenging but not impossible. I am guessing that they will use tight shots with a narrow depth of field to define what the characters can see. Plus simple good acting to show the characters lack of response to things that they cannot see.
My first thought on reading this: “how the bleeding heck are they going to do that?”.
I guess early on they’ll either have someone coming to one of the cities and having to be walked through the premise, or perhaps an inhabitant of one city visiting the other for the first time.
WHEN?
Well, they’re filming now, so probably this autumn? Maybe Christmas.