The Thirty-Nine Steps -- Not

If you live in the UK, you may well have seen last night's BBC adaptation of John Buchan's great adventure classic. Well. If the leading character had not been called Richard Hannay, I'd have been quite hard pressed to recognise the plot. OK, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but they took such liberties! The chief of these was the introduction of a female character, a suffragette by the name of Victoria. Now I have read this book as well as seeing numerous films, including Hitchcock's celebrated version starring Robert Donat, and I really was astonished at what a difference this addition made to the story and indeed to the whole tone of the book. In fact Victoria really ran the show, more or less, and poor old Hannay often seemed to be tagging along in her powerful wake. This seemed so far from Buchan's original idea that it was confusing, to say the least. Yes, you can call me a purist and no doubt that is what I am, even if it is a term of abuse. But the great thing about the original novel is the way Hannay, a fairly ordinary chap, discovers abilities and strengths he never knew he had. Clearly that was too old-fashioned an idea for the BBC in 2008.  It is, though, rather curious to read in the blurb for this DVD that "This lavish version attempts to stay faithful to the 1915 book, whilst injecting a more contemporary energy into the dramatic action sequences". For "contemporary energy" read "a woman". If you want to see what Buchan really wrote you should read the book, which is great. Or you could just read a summary of it here on Wikipedia.