The Dialectic of Transnational Adaptation: Questioning the Web Adaptation of A Suitable Boy

The recent BBC limited web series A Suitable Boy, released on Netflix with much hype, is an open invitation to recall Vikram Seth’s 1993 bestseller novel by the same name (the BBC television drama/miniseries based on A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, Director: Mira Nair/Shimit Amin, Adapted by Andrew Davies, original release: 26 July–24 August 2020, No. of series: 1, Episodes: 6). While the mixed reaction with which this airing was met is evidence of the general challenge of adapting a literary text to the brand-new web series format, this six-part series, in particular, draws attention to a complex transnational aesthetic dynamic that has hidden problematic reverberations. Going far beyond Oskar Walzel’s 1917 promising direction of the ‘reciprocal illumination of the arts’ through structural comparisons between different art forms, the latter-day underlay of multiple, contesting readings of this adaptational exercise makes that initial pathbreaking assertion seem woefully facile. In my essay, while attempting a reckoning of what is abrogated and what appropriated, I will address the prickly implications of this adaptational exercise which not only opens up multiple cultural perspectives but which also positions itself as a fraught interrogation of the ideas of colony and post-colony in the context of market concerns.