The Outcast (TV adaptation)
| The Outcast | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Drama |
| Based on |
The Outcast by Sadie Jones |
| Screenplay by | Sadie Jones |
| Directed by | Iain Softley |
| Starring | |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 2 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Celia Duval |
| Running time | 90 minutes |
| Production company(s) |
|
| Distributor | BBC |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC One |
| Original release | 12 July – 19 July 2015 |
The Outcast was a two-part television adaptation of Sadie Jones’ debut novel of the same name. It was first broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 12 July 2015 (Part I) and 19 July 2015 (Part II).
The screenplay for the television adaptation of The Outcast was written by the author Sadie Jones from her own novel of the same name. It was directed by Iain Softley and produced by Celia Duval on behalf of Blueprint Pictures Limited.
Lewis Aldridge is ten years old when he goes on a picnic with his mother and witnesses her drowning. His emotionally distant father struggles to deal with the situation and is soon remarried, to Alice. Lewis' young and well-meaning new stepmother tries her best, but is unable to reach Lewis emotionally. In adolescence, Lewis is taunted about the circumstances surrounding his mother's death and begins to self-harm. He subsequently sets the local church on fire and spends time in prison for committing arson. On his release from prison, he has increasingly complicated relationships with his stepmother, with Tamsin Carmichael, and with Kit Carmichael. Lewis separately confronts his father and the bullying Dicky Carmichael, before Kit and Lewis declare their love for each other, as Lewis is leaving to complete his National Service.
Lewis Aldridge is portrayed as a child by Finn Elliot, and as a young man by George MacKay. Lewis’ mother, Elizabeth, is played by Hattie Morahan and his father, Gilbert, by Greg Wise. Alice, his step-mother, is acted by Jessica Brown Findlay.
Dicky Carmichael is played by Nathaniel Parker, and his wife, Claire, by Helen Bradbury. Kit Carmichael is played by Jocelyn MacNab as a child and Jessica Barden as a young woman. Tamsin, her older sister, is played by Edie Whitehead as a child and Daisy Bevan as an adult.
Terry Ramsey, reviewing the first episode in The Daily Telegraph found himself "sternly unmoved" by its "relentlessly emotional, heart-tugging story of tragedy, its gushing orchestral music and its soft-focus shots of people with quivering lower lips and moistening eyes". He added, "I knew the programme makers had been trying to make me feel something. But their attempts at manipulation were so clumsy and obvious that it actually became annoying. Rather than shedding a tear at Lewis’s plight, I wanted to get hold of the producers and beat them about the head for allowing this to be so clichéd and self-indulgent". Reviewing episode two, the Daily Telegraph’s Jasper Rees was also unimpressed. Having recognised that, "The quality of the acting ensured much of this portrait of a stiff-backed patriarchy producing unhappiness in women and children rang true. Greg Wise in particular was convincing as Lewis’s emotionally vacant father, while Nathaniel Parker snaffled up the chance to embody a cold-hearted bully in a blazer", Rees added that, "And yet something in the storyboarding fatally depleted the atmosphere of accumulating tension. The plot frogmarched disjointedly from one crisis to the next, giving important scenes insufficient room to breathe and bringing a psychological coarseness to fine-grained undercurrents of feeling".
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