Martin Compston has spoken about how ITV’s Our House differs from the book on which it’s based, saying that the two are “hugely different”.
The four-part thriller, based on Louise Candlish’s novel of the same name, stars Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton as an estranged couple who discover that their property has been sold to a new family without their knowledge.
Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com for The Big RT Interview, Compston revealed that he intentionally didn’t read Candlish’s novel before filming the project.
“If it’s a book that’s successful, inevitably you’re going to love bits of the book which then get left out of the script. So we have to be faithful to [script writer Simon Ashdown’s] adaptation, that’s our truth and by all accounts, the way the story is told between the book and our script are hugely different,” he said.
“And I encountered that before, where there was a one of my favourite books, I was very keen to get it made into something and then when I saw the TV script, you just realised how much you can miss when you jump from the novel because you’ve seen inside different characters’ heads and different points of view, which is very difficult to do on screen.”
He continued: “And even when you hear somebody in a monologue, it’s a very hard thing to do, and so you can get away with a lot more in people’s imagination in a novel, which is why people love reading. But when it comes to it, I purposely avoided it.”
Compston added that now he’s completed the project, he “may go back [to the book]” when he gets time. “It’s a very well-loved book. Louise [Candlish] was fantastic, she was a great support, she came to set. She wasn’t overbearing and stuff, which must be really difficult when you write something to hand it over to people. She was great.”
While the book and TV show are very different, Compston said that Candlish did give him a few “little nuggets” of information about his character, Bram, adding: “The one thing we all really kind of gripped on is that he’s a really good father and you have to really grasp on to that because otherwise, he has no redeeming features and just any little moment we could grab of him smiling, because he could be on this downward depressed spiral for four episodes.
“But I think it was about making him charming and you could probably see why these women fall for hjm, and then him not being sleazy, you know, I think that that was sort of a key difference for him. This charming guy who’s really good company and then on his part, he could take things too far.”
Additional reporting by Helen Daly.
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