Showrunner Howard Gordon on adapting ‘Accused’ for the global audience
(Originally published in The Hindu on February 08, 2023)
A father takes his son on a hiking trip reasoning that spending some time together could help their relationship. Sounds lovely? What if I say that this is a plan by the father to kill his son by pushing him off a dangerous cliff? And what if I say that a lot of people might have thought of doing the same if they were in that father’s shoes? This is just one of the many mind-boggling ideas that are explored in Accused, the American adaptation of the hit BBC anthology series by Jimmy McGovern, which shows how an ordinary person gets caught up in extraordinary circumstances.
Each of the episodes in the anthology begins in a courtroom with the defendant and narrates their story non-linearly. Howard Gordon, the showrunner of the adaptation, which is streaming in India on Sony LIV, recounts the moment he was watching an episode called ‘Tracie’s Story’ from the original series and how it birthed the spark to adapt the series for American audiences. What compelled Howard the most was how the narrative made the viewers put themselves in the complicated situations that these characters find themselves in. “The world we are living in is binary; there’s right and wrong, and words are weaponised. This show was a great opportunity to slow down and discover that this world is complicated and that there is no right or wrong,” says Gordon, adding that it is that dramatic nature of the complexity that keeps people invested in the question of what they would do if it happened to them.
Thanks to the format, there is excitement at the prospect of meeting new people in new situations every week, says Howard, adding…
Read the full interview here: