The Glums (or, Les Misérables Andrew Davies style)

Yes, I know that I claimed to be looking forward to watching the Andrew Davies adaptation of Les Misérables. When it finally aired on Swedish television starting at the end of February, though, I wasn't exactly raring to go. What with the first episode being slow-moving, it has taken me this long to finally watch the rest of them, after they'd languished on my TiVo recorder box for months. The pace and story did pick up, but the adaptation remains easier to admire than to love. From the reviews I read before I watched it, I gathered that it was gloomy, that Jean Valjean was great and that it was difficult to get a handle on Javert. And guess what? The adaptation is gloomy, Jean Valjean is great and it's difficult to get a handle on Javert.

You could argue that it's no surprise when a programme with the title Les Misérables turns out to be on the glum side. The thing about Victor Hugo's original novel, though, was that it was such an exciting story full of colourful characters. That's what I've always felt was appealing about Les Mis, not any wallowing in the miserable state of some of the characters' lives. So the slowness and unrelenting seriousness of the first episode put me off rather, though in theory it's a clever idea to tell the back stories of Jean Valjean, Fantine and Marius in tandem. The glimpses from Marius's childhood don't really pay off much later, incidentally, which is a shame. The second episode, when the story gets going properly, is an improvement, but did we actually have to witness Fantine's teeth being pulled?

The one who carries this adaptation through some rough patches is Dominic West as Jean Valjean. He's been good in other parts where I've seen him, but here, freed from the "handsome lead" label, he really shines. Whether as a threatening convict, a shy and awkward do-gooder or the loving, possessive guardian of Cosette, he completely nails the characters. Of the Jean Valjeans I've seen - and there have been a couple - I believe he's the best, at least when it comes to the "straight" non-musical adaptations of the novel.

What about Javert, then? I have to admit I was one of those who raised my eyebrows enquiringly when they went with a black Javert, since he is not black in the novel. In fairness, though, if you want to do an ethnic switch, Javert is not a bad candidate - it fits neatly enough into his back story of an underdog who works himself up to an important position in the French police force. Also, fortunately, David Oyelowo is a strong actor, and manages to sell his overall Javert-ness better than, say, John Malkovich in the adaptation with Gérard Depardieu as Valjean. In fact, the credibility is more stretched by the general multiethnicity of the casting than the specific case of Javert. I can buy that 19th-century France wasn't uniformly white, but no way was it as diverse as this. It's a bit distracting, but there are rewards to accepting that a greater percentage of the characters have complicated back stories than is entirely probable. For instance, Adeel Akhtar's portayal of Thénardier is so spot on - the whole Thénardier clan is a success - that I'll gladly swallow their having a more exotic family tree than you'd usually find among French, small-town, 19th-century tavern keepers. After all, stranger things have happened.

To get back to Javert, Oyelowo puts in a good performance, but the problem lies in the way the character is written. One advantage with having trudged through the unabbreviated version of the novel - battles, sewers and all - is you get an answer to the question why Javert is seemingly so obsessed with a petty criminal (what's more, who's made good) like Valjean. The answer is: he isn't. The plot demands that the characters are confronted with each other time and again, but this is largely through coincidence. Whenever Javert chances on Valjean's trail, then of course he wants to nab him - after all, Valjean's the one who got away. But Javert's life isn't all about putting this one felon behind bars.

It would be truly novel if an adaptation chose to highlight this instead of depicting the Valjean-Javert relationship as the feud to end all feuds. Instead, Davies has gone the opposite route and made Javert more obsessed with Jean Valjean than in any other adaptation. Fair enough, but in that case there had better be an explanation as to why a stellar police officer would act so irrationally - a strange twist is that here, even Javert's spying on the barricade is tied up with his hunt for Jean Valjean. His motives are largely left a mystery, though. It's a pity, because there are promising hints here and there which would have been worthwhile following up on. When Jean Valjean saves Fantine from jail and takes care of her, after she's insulted him, Javert is flummoxed - "I don't understand you" is all he can say. Here's something one could have made something of: Jean Valjean as a puzzle, the only thing that doesn't fit Javert's orderly world view, and therefore a threat. But the adaptation never quite makes this case, or any other, in order to account for Javert's idée fixe.

As a mostly faithful adaptation, this series works well enough, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to someone who isn't already interested in Hugo's novel. For newcomers to Les Mis, I'd first recommend the musical (a stage version, where everyone can actually sing, rather than the film version), then the 1998 film with Liam Neeson as Valjean and Geoffrey Rush as the ultimate Javert. For all that it's six hours and a bit long, the Davies adaptation doesn't offer us that many more insights into the characters than the musical he despises. Marius and Cosette remain pretty uninteresting, though there's a forced attempt to give Cosette some "agency" at the end. The students still seem supremely silly in their willingness to die - and kill - for a lost cause (it was the same in the novel, though). At least in the musical they had some rousing songs. Lily Collins's Fantine is fine, but so is Uma Thurman in the Neeson film and pretty much any Fantine you get to see in the West End/on Broadway.

Where the adaptation wins over both musical and film is in the depiction of Jean Valjean and the Thénardiers. The latter hardly feature in the film and are grossly misrepresented - with the exception of Éponine, who gets a good press - in the musical. As for Jean Valjean, Davies gives due weight to some important issues which are usually glossed over in other Les Mis versions, such as the fact that Valjean does commit a theft (which he immediately regrets) after having met the Bishop of Digne - he steals a coin from a small boy. It is also made clear that he has no love for Marius. Beautiful as the ballad Bring Him Home from the musical is, Jean Valjean's feelings towards the young man who wants to take Cosette away from him are rather the exact reverse, which makes his saving of Marius all the more remarkable. And then there is West. If Jean Valjean is your favourite character from the story, the Davies adaptation is worth seeing for him alone.