Adaptations

I recently had one of those 'if you could adapt anything, what would it be?' sort of conversations, with someone in the position of actually being able to make it happen (i.e. a BBC drama producer).

This doesn't actually mean I've been handed the keys to the drama warehouse or anything, because it's now an incredibly lengthy process of finding literary properties to which a) the rights are available, and b) sound even vaguely like the sort of thing the BBC would want to make in the first place.

Sadly, my number one dream literary adaptation: PG Wodehouse's 'Psmith' novels have already been crossed off the list. Annoyingly, the rights to the main novels are available, but someone's got the rights to the character from a minor appearance in the Blandings novels, which makes it a bit fiddly, mainly because if one major Wodehouse adaptation is in the works, no-one's terribly keen on another starting up for the time being.

Hollywood, meanwhile, has bought the rights to pretty much every British children's classic from the last fifty years, so farewell my idea of doing the 'Dark Is Rising' books properly. Same for John Wyndham's 'The Kraken Wakes' (although I would have needed to come up an ending for that one).

Still, what with my mum having been a librarian, and my having worked in a bookshop for a good few years and having spent my formative years with books rather than people, there's still a list of, ooooh, approximately one jajillion titles to work though.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME. What's the one killer title you'd love to adapt/see a good adaptation of, for film or television? Includes comics, as the BBC seem much more open to that sort of thing nowadays (man, a decent BBC version of 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or Hellblazer would have been AWESOME).