If you like his dark materials you’ll love...

GORMENGHAST ECCENTRIC FANTASY ADAPTATION

Literary fantasy is having a big moment on screen, from the promise of more Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones spin-offs to the BBC’S recent adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels.

This four-part adaptation of Mervyn Peake’s 1950s novels from 2000 was, in its time, as epic and expensive as it got. Set in the vast castle of Gormenghast, a self

contained city stifled by excessive ritual and strict hierarchies, Peake’s ‘fantasy of manners’ – a comedy in other words – is stuffed with outrageous, obnoxious and scheming characters (among them Warren Mitchell’s Barquentine, above). We follow the rise of Jonathan Rhys Myers’s Steerpike from ‘kitchen rat’ to Machiavellian mastermind.