ITV's current drama series Lost In Austen might appear to be a cynical mash-up of two of their most successful brands of recent years, namely the time-jumping confusions of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes and the ever-popular Austen bandwagon. Critical reception has been lukewarm, with mutterings that this is a high concept too far.
This is, of course, complete tosh. Lost In Austen, rather than being viewed as a half-hearted attempt to combine two disparate genres in one easily digestible package, should instead be heralded as the trailblazer in what I sincerely hope is going to be an entirely new television genre, the meta-literary adaptation. With such a wealth of potential out there, the possibility for taking previously unthought-of approaches to great literature is endless. Here are a few suggestions for what may well be hitting a screen near you soon:
"Hangover, Squared." Barmaid Sylvia has been on a big night out with her girlfriends when, stumbling out of a Soho bar after one too many tequila shots, she falls, bumps her head and passes out. When she wakes up again, she has travelled back in time to Patrick Hamilton's milieu, a grim, grimy Fitzrovia full of disappointment, rejected love and heartbreak. Shrugging her shoulders, she gets a job at a nearby pub, The Midnight Bell, where she sets about spicing up the old-school atmosphere with two-for-one shots, all-night happy hours and manages to impress the dashing young barman, Bob, with an impressive display of cocktail flaring.
"Five Make A New Friend." Fresh from a Daily Mail headline, Spence has some serious problems with authority. He's from a broken home – father's a crack addict, mother died when he was five – and he's enough Asbos to fill several series of The Bill. What could be more natural for this connoisseur of shorties and blunts than to find himself transported to the happy land of Enid Blyton? Admittedly at first Julian, Anne, Dick, George and Timmy the dog are a bit surprised at Spence's repeated offers to "slip a shiv into them", and there's a minor contretemps when the kindly local policeman finds Spence's stash of class-A narcotics concealed in the Five's knapsack, but it's all sorted before tea, when the gang all get cheerfully high on PCP-laced ginger beer.
"Flashman's Schooldays." In the tough, inner-city comprehensive Rugby Heights, the teachers are less educators, more warriors. The pupils are out of control. Riots are more common than maths tests. Something has to be done. Step in a temporally displaced Flashman, fresh from subduing Tom Brown and his ilk. He may have been expelled from Rugby for being "beastly drunk", but he soon finds himself amongst friends here. With a merry cry of "We're not having any of this balderdash, lads!", Old Flashy soon finds himself the leader of a successful attempt to take over the school, seducing the head girl as he does so and re-introducing compulsory blanket-tossing for all pupils under the age of 13.
If any of these came to pass, or similar – I quite like the idea of a Kafka-inflected sitcom as well, something along the lines of "My Family, My Trial" perhaps – then we should be deeply grateful to Lost In Austen for showing that, sometimes, high concept can lead to artistic brilliance.
