{"id":20766,"date":"2020-07-20T14:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T05:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2020\/jul\/20\/a-suitable-boy-india-bbc-historical-drama-mira-nair-vikram-seth"},"modified":"2020-07-20T14:00:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T05:00:10","slug":"this-show-is-just-the-start-inside-the-bbcs-all-person-of-colour-a-suitable-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=20766","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;This show is just the start&#8217;: inside the BBC&#8217;s all-person-of-colour A Suitable Boy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has 110 actors, is based on one of the longest books in English &#8211; and it\u2019s the BBC\u2019s first historical drama with no white characters. But some think the series doesn\u2019t go far enough. We take a look behind the scenes<\/p>\n<p>\u2018This is an Indian story,\u201d says Tanya Maniktala, \u201cso it\u2019s about time it was told by us.\u201d The 22-year-old actor is speaking by video call from Delhi about playing the lead in a groundbreaking BBC adaptation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/1999\/mar\/27\/books.guardianreview1\">Vikram Seth<\/a>\u2019s novel A Suitable Boy.<\/p>\n<p>The six-part series is the first time the BBC has had a historical drama cast entirely with people of colour, and the first time that Seth\u2019s 1993 novel \u2013 one of the longest in the English language \u2013 has been adapted for the screen. \u201cIt\u2019s a landmark,\u201d says BBC commissioning editor Mona Qureshi. \u201cWith a novel like this, where there aren\u2019t characters who are white, it makes sense to have an all south Asian cast. It has been a long time coming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2020\/jul\/20\/a-suitable-boy-india-bbc-historical-drama-mira-nair-vikram-seth\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has 110 actors, is based on one of the longest books in English &#8211; and it\u2019s the BBC\u2019s first historical drama with no white characters. But some think the series doesn\u2019t go far enough. We take a look behind the scenes\u2018This is an Indian story,\u201d says Ta&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[511,71,1533,1041,69,62,238,61,520,519,521,1578,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-drama","category-fiction","category-film","category-india","category-media","category-south-and-central-asia","category-television","category-television-radio","category-television-industry","category-vikram-seth","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20767,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20766\/revisions\/20767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}