My bright idea is to write an adaptation of "Biggles" for a TV series.

Sort of going off the back of the successful BBC resurrections of classic heroes like Doctor Who and Robin Hood, and the older adaptations of Hornblower and Sharpe.

I'll ask over in the Adaptations thread more about what to do in terms of the actual writing, but I'm wondering what to do in terms of what to aim for in terms of lengths and so on.

However, my query for this forum is this. The original Biggles books, the ones set in the First World War, are not "novels" but rather collections of short stories. They're very episodic with only a few of the stories linking directly with each other.

So, how would you format a series in this case? Do like Hornblower and stretch out each individual short story with added material into an hour, or present them more or less as they are - maybe getting through two or even three incidents in the book and adding in some sort of bridging story?

Also, in a TV series, is it best to jump straight into the action or start with an introductory story? I seem to recall "Band Of Brothers" being commended for its bravery in having a first episode entirely devoted to the training camp, where most series would have started with D-Day and flashed back.

Hey,

As someone who is actually obsessed with Hornblower, I think the best thing to do would be to do something along those lines. Each episode was roughly an hour and a half, so you could fit so much more in and the episodes wouldn't have to un off from each other, especially if you plan on releasing them as Hornblower was released, two a year and then a gap before the next one. ALthough the later ones had the two a year running on from each other (So there was over three hours of storyline) the earlier ones didn't, so you could take a note from them.

As for the action, that's completely up to you, really. Sorry, I know it's a cop out, but if you feel more comfortable building up to the action, then go for it. I personally prefer to get to know the characters a bit before any huge action takes place so that I can actually care about the outcome

Hope my rambling helped a little.

Thanks, Ruby xx