Coming to TV: Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy

Vikram Seth’s groundbreaking novel A Suitable Boy will soon be an eight-part television series. The series, to be filmed in India next year, will be the BBC’s first period drama with a non-white cast. It will be broadcast in 2019 or early 2020 by which time Seth’s much-awaited sequel, A Suitable Girl, is also expected to be out.
Award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies (whose credits include 2016’s acclaimed War and Peace and the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) will adapt A Suitable Boy for BBC One. Vikram Seth said: ‘I have carried with me for many years the stories of Lata, her family and the many people they encounter. I look forward to seeing them brought to life for television, and I am particularly happy that the series is to be filmed in India with an entirely Indian cast.’
Set in post-independence India, the novel follows four linked families across north India and revolves around Mrs Rupa Mehra’s efforts to find a suitable husband for her youngest daughter, Lata, who is torn between her duty towards her mother and the excitement of romance represented by her different suitors. Davies said: ‘Lata is a great literary heroine in the tradition of Jane Austen and George Eliot. But behind her stands a massive supporting cast of striking, funny, irrepressible characters and a vision of India in the 1950s that no reader can ever forget. I can’t wait to bring the magic of the book to life on screen.’
WATCH: Vikram Seth