Adaptation

I am still enjoying the latest TV adaptation of Father Brown stories. The first 2 episodes, and some or all of the remaining stories come from the collection of Father Brown stories by G.K. Chesterton called "The Innocence of Father Brown". This is one of several collections of Fr Brown stories by Chesterton.

Of course, the TV versions of these stories have been changed from the original, which can be irritating, but I am trying to keep an open mind about this.

To start with, the stories are all set in the same village, with a continuing group of supporting characters, like the housekeeper and the woman on the lookout for handsome visitors to the village. From memory, the original stories have a bigger variety of settings and characters, but I can understand this gives a unity to the TV series.

The second story in the TV series is "The Flying Stars".

I have just quickly re-read the original story and the basic story has been preserved on TV, but there are some differences:

• There is no suggestion of any murder in the original. The Colonel's wife has died of natural causes recently, and this was an accident which the thief used to steal the diamond necklace called "the flying stars", by posing as uncle James.
• there is no mention of any will or of debts crippling the estate. It is true that the young lovers are part of the story, but they are not being thwarted by the colonel, but by the thief who has incriminated the young man.
• the thief is Flambeau, a character who appears in many of these stories, who eventually reforms and becomes a detective himself who helps Fr Brown in later stories. He appears to be killed in the TV show, it will be interesting to see how they handle this in later episodes.
• the key scene is a pantomime held on Boxing Day, where Flambeau is dressed as Harlequin, not a dame. The point of this is that a policeman appears during the pantomine and appears to be hit and subdued as part of the play. In fact he is a real policeman who was fooled by Flambeau into walking into the middle of the pantomime, where he uses chloroform to render him unconscious.

I was pleased to see that the TV adapter could not resist preserving a typical piece of Chesterton paradox/observation which appears when Fr Brown and others talk about the Socialist young lover, namely:

   "A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook, with some impatience; and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it."

   "But who won't allow you," put in the priest in a low voice, "to own your own soot."

   Crook looked at him with an eye of interest and even respect. "Does one want to own soot?" he asked.

   "One might," answered Brown, with speculation in his eye. "I've heard that gardeners use it. And I once made six children happy at Christmas when the conjurer didn't come, entirely with soot - applied externally."

A typical part of any Fr Brown story is the salvation of the criminal. In this TV adaptation, this was applied to both the thief and the Colonel, and this was similar to Brown's conversation with Flambeau the thief in the original:

   "I want you to give them back, Flambeau, and I want you to give up this life. There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped in slime."

and a little further on...

   Everything continued still, as if the small man below held the other in the tree in some long invisible leash; and he went on:

   "Your downward steps have begun. You used to boast of doing nothing mean, but you are doing something mean tonight. You are leaving suspicion on an honest boy with a good deal against him already; you are separating him from the woman he loves and who loves him. But you will do meaner things than that before you die."

   Three flashing diamonds fell from the tree to the turf. The small man stooped to pick them up, and when he looked up again the green cage of the tree was emptied of its silver bird.

   The restoration of the gems (accidentally picked up by Father Brown, of all people) ended the evening in uproarious triumph; and Sir Leopold, in his height of good humour, even told the priest that though he himself had broader views, he could respect those whose creed required them to be cloistered and ignorant of this world.