No songs needed
I’m a huge fan of the Les Misérables musical, mainly of the latest iteration of the film. When it comes to picking out musical favourites, I need not to look any further than any song from that soundtrack involving Hugh Jackman. Before seeing the musical adaption of the book I had no prior knowledge of Les Misérables, I knew it was a musical but that was it. I eventually found out about the book but never read it, call me uncultured if you want to. When I first heard of BBC doing an adaption of the book but this time without the music I was intrigued.
Intrigued I still remain. The first episode of the six-episode mini-series just aired and from the viewpoint of a fan of just the
This backstory and parts that were clearly left out for the musical version are what intrigues me most. A lot of the parts of the first episode are what you get to see in the musical but there are added elements, small added characters which help to create this scenario. The musical obviously jumps quickly from one moment to the next but the mini-series does a great effort of piecing together the three main threads and placing them in sync with one another.
You have Jean Valjean’s part of him becoming a free man, you have Fantine and her first romance and you have Marius whose father isn’t allowed to see him. It is the character of Marius who intrigues me the most as he is my least favourite character in the musical yet is my favourite story thread so far in this mini-series. In the musical you get a little backstory but not as much as everyone else and Marius’ circumstances are being used wisely to help set up the drama for further episodes.
Now I still haven’t read the books so I could just be saying things you already know. The simple truth about this series is that if you’re a fan of the musical then you’ll want them to burst into song but unfortunately, they won’t. There are certainly moments where they could and the score so far hasn’t been incredible but the acting and visuals have made for quite a visually pleasing production. Once I saw Les Mis with some bad Australian accents and it wasn’t very pleasing and nothing from the series so far sticks out at you like that did for me. Dominic West makes for a great Jean Valjean and Lily Collins seems to be a great choice for Fantine.
An adaption of Les Misérables without the music is always going to divide the book lovers from the