Andrew O’Hagan on how ‘box set’ dramas have influenced new state-of-the-nation novel set for TV adaptation

Caledonian Road already snapped up for series

Andrew O'Hagan launched his new novel Caledonian Road at a Portobello Bookshop in-conversation event with author Kirstin Innes at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh.

It took him the best part of a decade to complete his eagerly-awaited new “state-of-the nation” novel.

Now one of Scotland’s best-known authors has revealed that it has already been snapped up for a TV adaptation set to run for years.

The makers of Slow Horses and Chernobyl will be working on Caledonian Road, the show based on O’Hagan’s “Dickensian” exploration of high society and establishment corruption in post-Brexit, post-pandemic London.

Writer Andrew O'Hagan. Picture: Jon Tonks/PA Wire

Days after the book’s publication, the Glasgow-born author has admitted Caledonian Road, which boasts around 60 characters who are listed at the start of the novel, was influenced by the impact of long-running ‘box set’ dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

O’Hagan was speaking at a launch event in Edinburgh for his sprawling 641-page novel, which focuses on the downfall of a Scottish art historian, critic and "celebrity" intellectual, Campell Flynn.

The official announcement of the TV adaptation promises “a biting portrait of modern British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising―and declining―fortunes”.

Caledonian Road is expected to be directed by Johan Renck, the Emmy Award-winning director of HBO series Chernobyl, who will also co-produce the drama. O’Hagan’s novel will be adapted by screenwriter Will Smith, who is best known as the showrunner of Slow Horses, the hit spy thriller drama starring Jack Lowden and Gary Oldman.

Author Andrew O'Hagan. Picture: Michael Buckner/Getty Images

The author, who will be executive producer of the Caledonian Road series, has said his new book “couldn’t be in better hands” for a TV adaptation.

His previous semi-autobiographical novel Mayflies was adapted into an award-winning two-part BBC series starring Martin Compston and Tony Curran.

O’Hagan, a former Booker Prize nominee, has described his new book as “a social saga about power, corruption and lies, about an intelligent man’s fall from grace and the instability of reality in contemporary London”.

Speaking at an in-conversation event with author Kirstin Innes at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh, O’Hagan said: “It’s a lovely team I’m involved with – they’re great people.

Andrew O'Hagan launched his new novel Caledonian Road at a Portobello Bookshop in-conversation event with author Kirstin Innes at Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh.

"One of the things they have said is that they see Caledonian Road is being a huge returning series with one of the big streamers.

"They said to me at a meeting the other day: ‘Are you going to write a sequel?’ I told them that was their job! They can take the characters into their hinterlands, in the way that The Wire and The Sopranos did. They started off with the characters in the pilots.

“I don’t know that it will be me that finds the new lives for them. I would encourage them to go where they’d like to go."

Asked if was now writing with possible screen adaptations in mind, O’Hagan said: “For the first time, I think, it is possible for writers who think of themselves as social novelists to take in another layer of narrative energy.

“It’s to do with how those big narratives unfold in ‘box-set world.’

"I would be the first person to say, as someone of my generation who has grown up with The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, I love the idea that you can do a television novel, where characters grow and change, complexities emerge and you're fully entertained and wrapped up in their lives.”