Quite Shitty One Evening

I had thought that if I waited long enough I may have calmed down enough to post my thoughts about ITV1’s recent adaptation of Christopher Brookmyre’s novel “Quite Ugly One Morning” but I think that the title of this post suggests I haven’t waited long enough.

I have never been so angrily disappointed by a TV program….ever!! I had been looking forward to it for months, ever since I first heard they were making a TV version of my favourite book. However, it was so bad that if I had to choose between watching it again and having to watch some reality-TV-guff, then I’d take 2 hours with Jade Goody every time.

The problem was that they seemed to have taken the original book, cut it into a thousand pieces, thrown them in the air, picked ten bits up at random and then made up enough absolute cack to replace the rest. Some characters had their parts in the story swapped, I mean the woman in the story who is a central character and goes on in future books to become his wife, Sarah Slaughter, was relegated to an ex-girlfriend!! Others were doing things that we totally out of character, the excellent Annette Crosbie committing a murder that is not in the book and was totally unnecessary, or not doing things that we central parts of the book, by which I mean the fabulous Mark Benton who was totally wasted in this drivel!!!

And as for James Nesbitt as Jack Parlabane…..I was prepared to give him a chance but…NO NO NO!!!!!! And now they have but his curmudgeonly face on the cover of the book so anyone trying to repair the damage this program did by reading what is still a fantastic book is going to end up imagining him as Parlabane!!

One word for you ITV……BASTARDS!!!!!