Mick Herron, Suzie Miller and Benjamin Law on great adaptations — from the page to the stage to the screen, and back again

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This will had come about in the most suspicious circumstances you could possibly imagine.

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Who gets what when someone dies and who decides?

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The difficulty with undue influence often is proving it.

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Join me, Damian Carrick, for the Law Report special series on wills, Over My Dead Body.

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The person felt like they had no option, but it's difficult to prove that.

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To hear, search for the Law Report and look out for Over My Dead Body. Find it on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

**Natasha Mitchell** (0:37)
Natasha Mitchell here. Hey, ABC Radio National's Top 100 Books Vote. It launches next week and I would love you to be part of a very special kids book event for it if you are in Melbourne next Tuesday, the 1st of September.
Join me with superstar kids authors, including Australian Children's Laureate, Andy Griffiths, to talk debates in kids literature, but also our favourite kids books, which we want to see make the vote this year. You can head to the Big Ideas homepage, scroll down, look for B in our audience to grab your free spot before they book out. What better way to celebrate the first day of spring, hey? Look, more superstars on the show for you today, from the page to the stage to the screen. When a book becomes a hit TV series or a play becomes a Hollywood film, in your mind, what makes it a great adaptation? Today on Big Ideas, you'll meet the creative brains behind the international hits, Slow Horses and Prima Facie.

**Suzie Miller** (1:49)
A lot of agents say to playwrights early on in their career, it was said to me early on in my career, just write a novel and then we can sell it to Hollywood and then you can write a play. I went, but I want to write a play. I don't understand this logic.

**Mick Herron** (2:03)
There was one moment where they were talking through a scene with me and they said, and this is the point where Jackson and I will say to River Cartwright, whatever the line was, and I went, that doesn't sound like something Jackson would say to me. They looked and one of them said, Mick, it's in the book.
At which point I just accepted that they knew what they were doing.

**Natasha Mitchell** (2:27)
Yes, it's a joyous Sydney Writers Festival conversation with the British novelist Mick Herron, author of the Slough House series of spy thrillers about a dysfunctional team of failed MI5 spooks. The sixth season of the acclaimed TV adaptation Slow Horses is due for release next month.
Mick's Down Cemetery Road novels have also been adapted for television. And Lawyer, Playwright, Screenwriter and Novelist Suzie Miller, whose film adaptation of her Laurence Olivier award-winning one-woman play Prima Facie will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival next month, starring Wicked's Cynthia Erivo. This story about the criminal justice system's handling of sexual assault cases has been turned into a novel as theatre, it's been produced in 48 countries, more than 20 languages in the UK.
It was so impactful, it led to reform of the criminal justice system. She's also the pen behind the play's RBG of Many, One and Interalia, which will be released as a novel next month, and her new play Strong is the New Pretty, about the birth of the AFL Women's League, will premiere in Brisbane from next week before travelling to Canberra, Sydney and Geelong, which I'm getting along to that one for. They're joined in conversation by someone else who's worked across multiple mediums, who's a broadcaster, writer for ScreenStage and print, Benjamin Law.

**Benjamin Law** (3:52)
Now, the session today is called Great Adaptations, and you might remember in the Oscar-winning movie adaptation how Nicholas Cage, playing a fictional version of the film's real-life screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, is very quickly driven to a complete nervous breakdown during his process of trying to adapt The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlin, played by Meryl Streep. And that's because the adaptation process, turning a best-selling book into a TV show or film or stage play can be incredibly fraught. After all, what sings so subtly on the page can easily land with a thud on the screen.
And if you're an author, how do you know you can trust a TV creator to whom you're handing over your precious book, baby? How do you stop yourself from interfering, and should you interfere? And how do you dramatise the rich internal life of a character? And what if everyone watching it thinks, oh, the book was better?