Decline And Fall
Tiger Aspect Drama, Cavebear Productions and BBC One are delighted to announce a television adaptation of Decline And Fall, Evelyn Waugh’s hugely popular novel.
Published: 21 March 2017
I am extremely pleased to be a part of this amazing adaptation by James Wood. I’ve been a fan of this book since I read it as a teenager, and I just hope that I can do it justice.
Starring Jack Whitehall (Bad Education, Fresh Meat), Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives), David Suchet (Agatha Christie’s Poirot), Douglas Hodge (The Night Manager), Stephen Graham (The Secret Agent, This Is England), Vincent Franklin (The Thick Of It), Gemma Whelan (Game of Thrones, The Moorside) and Jason Watkins (Taboo, W1A), Decline and Fall will air on BBC One in Spring 2017.
The mini-series marks the first televisual adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Decline And Fall, one of the greatest comic novels of all time, and is written by James Wood (Rev). Decline And Fall sees Paul Pennyfeather (Jack Whitehall) as an inoffensive divinity student at Oxford University in the 1920s, who is wrongly dismissed for indecent exposure having been made the victim of a prank by The Bollinger Club.
David Suchet plays Dr. Fagan, the headmaster of Llanabba, an obscure public school in Wales where Paul first finds employment and works with fellow teacher Grimes (Douglas Hodge). It is at the school that he meets a beautiful South American woman, the Honourable Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde, played by Eva Longoria, who is the mother of one of the pupils. For Paul, it is love at first sight, but little does he know the surprises that lie ahead of him when he agrees to tutor her son over the summer holidays.
Of his casting as Paul Pennyfeather, Jack Whitehall says: "I am extremely pleased to be a part of this amazing adaptation by James Wood. I’ve been a fan of this book since I read it as a teenager, and I just hope that I can do it justice."
Shane Allen, Controller of BBC Comedy Commissioning, says: "One of the greatest comic novels of all time, this satirical masterpiece is long overdue a television debut. Waugh deploys comedy and tragedy to point up prevailing institutional corruption and the dehumanising consequences of elitism, very timely and apposite for today. James has done a terrific job of getting to the core of it, and the writing has attracted a fantastic cast."
Decline And Fall was commissioned by Charlotte Moore and Shane Allen, along with former BBC Comedy commissioning editor Chris Sussman. It is executive produced by Ben Cavey (for Cavebear Productions), Will Gould (for Tiger Aspect Drama), Frith Tiplady (for Tiger Aspect Drama) and James Wood. The Director is Guillem Morales (Julia’s Eyes, Inside No 9). The production marks 50 years since Waugh’s death.
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