Why haven’t the Aubrey-Maturin books gone from oceans to streaming? - Hindustan Times
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Why haven’t the Aubrey-Maturin books gone from oceans to streaming?

ByK Narayanan
Oct 30, 2021 08:09 PM IST

Patrick O’Brian’s series of 20 novels, about two good friends’ adventures out at sea, seems tailormade for an adaptation. Here’s hoping someone picks it up, says K Narayanan.

In September, Netflix announced that it was acquiring the Roald Dahl Story Company, which owns the rights to the whimsical tales for children and adults written by the English secret agent-turned-author. Earlier this year, the streaming platform also announced that it was adapting Brian Jacques’s beloved Redwall fantasy books into a movie and series.

Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). While one movie understandably couldn’t do justice to the many books, a TV series could. PREMIUM
Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). While one movie understandably couldn’t do justice to the many books, a TV series could.

Elsewhere, Apple TV has its Foundation series, based on the books by Isaac Asimov, while Amazon Prime is making shows set in JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth (set well before the saga of the rings) as well as launching a long-delayed adaptation of Robert Jordan’s doorstopper fantasy series The Wheel of Time.

There’s a tremendous appetite for literary content that can be adapted for streaming platforms, and it is mystifying why Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels have not been snapped up yet.

Peter Weir’s film adaptation, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany; 2003), was a critical success, but did not make enough money at the box office to justify the planned sequels. It was nominated for 10 Oscars, but won only two (for sound editing and cinematography), losing out to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

It’s a beautiful movie, but it can hardly do justice to the series of 20 books (and one unfinished novel that O’Brian was working on when he died in 2000).

Set during the Napoleonic wars, there’s intrigue and adventure aplenty in the Aubrey-Maturin books — naval action, shipwrecks, political manoeuvring, espionage, duels — and it all flows smoothly, seldom straining credulity. The language is from that period, as well as the jargon. There are topgallants and royals, futtocks and holystones, as well as “ill-feckit gaberlunizes” and “clutchfist lickpennies”, terms reminiscent of another famous fictional sailor, Herge’s Captain Haddock. But where Herge used vivid colours and clean lines to tell his Tintin stories, O’Brian uses language.

At the heart of the Aubrey-Maturin books is the relationship between two men, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Dr Stephen Maturin. Jack is a conservative, a lord of the manor who firmly believes in the class system. Stephen is a democrat and a liberal. Jack is a big man, red-faced and blue-eyed; Stephen is frequently described as ill-favoured, with pale eyes and paler skin. Jack is all surface — what you see is what you get. Stephen is a man of many layers. Jack is punctual to a fault; Stephen often gets into trouble because he loses track of time. Jack is a seaman through and through. Stephen, despite spending almost two decades at sea, can barely tell larboard from starboard. It’s a running joke that he ends up falling into the sea about once every book. And yet, the doctor is a skilled swordsman and crack shot. When Jack’s crew are shipwrecked on a tropical island, with their stores of gunpowder and shot running low, it’s Stephen who goes hunting for the crew. He’s also a naturalist. And a secret agent, gathering information about Napoleon and other enemies of England.

One thing that unites these two men is music. Stephen is a cellist, Jack “scrapes a bit on the fiddle”. Every evening, the two of them get together in Jack’s cabin and play, and O’Brian uses these sessions to reinforce how these two dissimilar men go so well together. “…he brought the bow down, and the cello broke into its deep noble song, followed instantly by the piercing violin, dead true to the note. The music filled the great cabin, the one speaking to the other, both twining into one, the fiddle soaring alone: they were in the very heart of the intricate sound, the close and lovely reasoning, and the ship and her burdens faded far, far from their minds.”

Even if the streaming platforms haven’t got around to them yet, it’s worthwhile, on a stormy night, to pull your chair nearer the window, where you can hear the rain, with a beverage of choice at hand and Boccherini or Mozart in the background, and lose yourself in the adventures of two friends as they sail around the world.

(This story has been updated to reflect that the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World won two Oscars, not one.)

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