The City & The City (TV Adaptation)
The City & The City is one of my favorite China Miéville books. I love the conceit of the nested cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, and I love the voice of our narrator, the smart, world-weary and not-always-so-honest Tyador Borlu.
Amazon Prime offers a four-part adaptation of the book. All four episodes are directed by Tom Shankland, with Tony Grisoni, who was also credited as a writer, as one of the producers. China Miéville shared a writing credit. The series first aired on BBC2 in 2018.
The show stars David Morrisey as Borlu and Mandeep Dhillon as Constable Corwi.
The four episodes are named for each of the four sections in the book, and while it is simplified, the show at least follows the police-procedural part of the book. As usual, some parts were better than the book (mostly where visuals were needed), some were as good, and at least one change was purely disappointing.
Borlu and Corwi are called to the scene of a murder. They soon realize that the woman was murdered somewhere else and dumped. They struggle to identify the woman and find the murder site, which is made more challenging than it would be in most cities.
Beszel and Ul Qoma are two completely different municipalities that occupy the same space and time but seem to exist in different dimensions except for places where they bleed through. I tried to imagine what a viewer who hasn’t read the book would think the first time Borlu looks away from a building, or a group of people walking on the road. Or what they would make of the shimmery, rainbow barrier down the center of a main street. Eventually the story gives an explanation of the crime of “breach,” deliberately looking at either of the other cities from the one you’re in.
Basically, this was one of the areas where the story was “dumbed down” a bit, with the most obvious signal coming when a child launches a flying toy from Ul Qoma and it lands in Beszel, by Borlu’s foot, and he won’t kick it back. The show relies instead on posters that seem to warn mostly about the citizens of Ul Qoma (“They look just like you!”). This tied into the fascistic nationalism in Beszel, which is what the show, rather than the book, is really interested in. The show depicts the fascist group as far more powerful and far more dangerous, directly dangerous to Borlu, than they ever seemed to be in the book, and this worked as far as creating immediate danger, which otherwise would be lacking from the episodic story.
I thought they got closer to capturing the surrealistic feeling of breach later in the show, when Borlu, who is sent to Ul Qoma to consult on the case, experiences actual physical discomfort and disorientation his first few minutes in the city he is not supposed to see.
The adaptation does an excellent job of keeping Sear and Core, the American corporation that is infusing capital into both cities, in our consciousness. While this important player disappears for a good part of the book, the show harks back to it now and again, replaying its hypnotic slogan like a refrain, even if sometimes it is only background.
Another area of excellence is the archeological dig with the weird petroglyphs, which might have originated in Orciny, a mythical “third city” that fascinates a number of the show’s characters.
Where the series is brilliant is in the casting of Mandeep Dhillon as Lizbetya Corwi, Borlu’s constable. I have never seen Dhillon act before; she is vibrant and nearly luminous, providing just the right amount of snark and eye-rolling, still convincing us that she is an excellent copper. I enjoyed the plot twist that they gave her character, too.
I was not as happy with the way the series chose to depict Qussin Dhatt, the Ul Qoma detective Borlu is seconded to. They changed the gender — she’s a woman now – but she has none of Dhatt’s fierce, frenetic energy or the cheerful, venial corruption of the origin character. Instead she’s a flat bureaucrat and a device for exposition about Ul Qoma government and Ul Qoma society. When she does decide to color outside the lines to help Borlu, her motivations aren’t clear at all.
But the adaptation’s biggest letdown in the addition and then fridging of a wife for Borlu. Katrinya Borlu (Lara Pulver) is a scholar who is interested in Orciny, and she has been missing for two years. Borlu suspects breach. Through flashbacks, we see Katrinya’s increasingly close relationship with the notorious archeology professor David Bowden (Christian Camargo), who disgraced himself writing a book about the possibility of the existence of Orciny. Like Dhatt, Katrinya exists solely to provide exposition and to morph Borlu into a stereotypical jealous husband with unresolved issues. The end is pure fridging, and Borlu’s plot resolution is a hopeless cliché, visually as well as from a story viewpoint. What a letdown.
This came pretty close to ruining the show for me, and pretty early on, really, as soon as I realized that Borlu had a missing wife. I am glad I hung in there, mainly for Dhillon’s performance, and for the eerie, lovely visuals and some of the production values, like the photography and the lighting. There is a lovely scene near the end where Borlu imagines one of the two dead graduate students following the dig shaft all the way to its end, where there is a spiral of ethereal light… and then something is revealed. It was perfect.
The Woman in the Fridge choice hampered, but did not destroy, this series. Still, I don’t think it was overly successfully, and I would guess it failed to find its audience. I’d generally say, “Reread the book instead,” but if you’re bored out of your skull right now, it’s worth a watch.
I was somehow wholly unaware of this–thanks for making me aware. I’ll have to check it out if just for curiosity, as I loved the novel
Hmm.When I read the book, many years ago, I read it as the cities co-existed in the real world. The buildings and people were mingled together, and the distance between them was purely social. You didn’t “see” the people and buildings of the other city. Ignoring them was part of an ingrained social compact. Even crossing over was symbolic, a ritual. It made the story interesting — how and why did this come about? If they are in different dimensions — and I’m not saying that they aren’t — that makes the story a little more of a mundane fantasy/sf story.
Mieville’s book leaves that ambiguous, I think, although the fact that the weather is different in Ul Qoma seemed like a definite clue. The adaptation makes it more literal with the shimmery barrier.
I no doubt missed that clue:)
Hey Marion! The weather is the *same* in Ul Qoma and Beszel in the novel. They even have a recurring joke about raining at the same time in both cities (which of course would happen, since they are in the same location!).
Mieville is explicit that the separation is 100% a social construct, there are no sci-fi conceits about it. I think in the TV show it’s also a societal construct, only depicted visually as the characters “refuse” or “mentally block” the other city, and it becomes painful for them to “see” what they are not used to.
The novel is more explicit about this, there are multiple occasions in which a character glances a person, then some cue (clothes? posture?) makes them think they should “unsee” the person, then do a double take and realize they can see the person after all (due to some other hint that it’s in the same city as them). It’s all 100% societal, no magic barrier at all.
What I disliked about the BBC adaptation is that they turned Orciny into something more mystical. Mieville is a leftist and an atheist, and Orciny in his novel is not left ambiguous — it’s made clear it’s a delusion and bad scholarship by a professor, who later regrets having written the book. Nobody takes Orciny seriously except, briefly, Mahalia, and some of the young students. In the end it’s revealed as a sham. It’s definitely not some sort of afterlife. With Borlú’s wife they seemed to use some of the text that the novel uses for Mahalia, only with a sad “fridging” moment and imbuing Orciny with an “afterlife” aspect that rings flat.
Corwi was my favorite character too!
No your initial reading was correct. There’s nothing super natural going on with the cities location amongst each other. Some bits are one, some the other and some are shared (or crosshatched as they say). The book is about the incredible mental exercise of each ignoring the other and being legally obliged to do so. Several reviewers of this novel have missed the point and think this is some sort of sci fi, different dimensions, weird physics stuff. It most definitely isn’t.
No your initial reading was correct. There’s nothing super natural going on with the cities location amongst each other. Some bits are one, some the other and some are shared (or crosshatched as they say). The book is about the incredible mental exercise of each ignoring the other and being legally obliged to do so. Several reviewers of this novel have missed the point and think this is some sort of sci fi, different dimensions, weird physics stuff. It most definitely isn’t. The comment about the weather being different is made as a joke.
Troy, 100% agreed.
Sadly the BBC adaptation is also confused about this. They seem to think Orciny is some kind of afterlife, when in the novel it’s made clear it’s just a bogus theory by a professor doing bad scholarship, and this taints his career. For some reason in the TV show Bowden is subversive but still respected and can give lectures. In the novel he’s acknowledged as a fraud and no longer has a career. He sees Mahalia “buying” Orciny as a way to vindicate himself in the eyes of someone else, even though he knows it’s a sham (and a scam related to stealing the artifacts, of course; thankfully the adaptation keeps this).
Excellent review. I agree on most all points, including that the “fridge wife” plot addition was very annoying. Borlu in the book is a tough loner, and I see no good reason for him to be a widower haunted by his wife’s death. That said, I like watching the series after having just read the book. And I agree that Mandeep Dhillon is the stand out actor here. I hope she has since gotten more roles–will research. I would like to see more film versions attempted of China M’s novels. But I am now starting to readi his new non fiction book A Spectre Haunting.
I didn’t know he had a nonfiction work out. I’ll have to find it. And this comment made me think I was to read The City and The City.