Hello and welcome to Everything Else, the Culture podcast from The Financial Times.

This is episode 14, which means it's the penultimate episode of series one. I'm John and with me is Griselda.

This week we're going to be thinking about adaptation.

And whether it's possible to turn a much beloved book into a really good stage play or film,

can it be done? Is it even possible?

Also coming up, I went to Paris to interview the French author, Edouard Louis.

He grew up poor and gay in a rural village in northern France.

He had to change his entire identity.

And then he wrote an absolutely amazing bestselling book, which isn't too bad for a 24-year-old.

And we'll call our colleague on the phone to find out what it's like to take one of the founders of the dating apps Tinder and Bumble on a lunch date.

So, John, you and I both love the Elena Ferranti novels, the best-selling quartet, the Neapolitan

quartet.

And when we saw that these novels are going to be put on stage at the Rose Theatre in Kingston,

in London, we were quite intrigued to see how this would work.

It kind of got us thinking about adaptations, about when they succeed and when they fail and why so many people do turn

novels into plays and into films. Yeah, I mean, you go to the theatre a lot more than me typically,

but it's also a huge year, again, as it is every year, because

Hollywood seems to have lost its imagination to be, yeah, another massive year for adaptations

in film as well. We have 50 shades darker, well, that actually has already come out. Dave,

Eggers, the Circle, coming out soon, Julian Barnes, the sense of an ending, all these adaptations

on the big screen. So, kind of wherever we look, we're looking at adaptations or franchises or...

Which adaptations do you think have worked really well?

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