Could there be a Les Misérables series 2 on BBC One?
BBC One's lavish Les Misérables drew to a close tonight, with the six-part series based on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel – and not, writer Andrew Davies was keen to emphasise, the musical version – wrapping up the saga of Jean Valjean (Dominic West) and his long-time nemesis Javert (David Oyelowo).
That's your lot, right? The final battle over. Curtain down.
Well, possibly not. Though Davies' series rinsed the original book, there is source material in existence that the Beeb could plough if they wanted to commission a second series.
In 1995, 133 years after the publication of the first novel, HarperCollins released Cosette: The Sequel to Les Misérables from American author Laura Kalpakian. It continued the story of Valjean's adopted daughter (played in the BBC's Les Mis by actress Ellie Bamber) following his death.
In the book, one-time resistance fighter Marius (played by Josh O'Connor on television) becomes the publisher of La Lumiere, a reformist newspaper for the French working class. In the (other) French Revolution of 1848, he's jailed for his anti-royalist views but rallies to support the masses.
Cosette also sees the title character follow in Valjean's footsteps by adopting a street kid known as 'the Starling', who ends up catching the eye of Cosette's teenage daughter Fantine (named after her late mother).
Could the book serve as inspiration for a second series of TV's Les Misérables? The odds on that, we'd guess, are long. In terms of style and tone, it's inspired far more by the musical than Hugo's original book, so Andrew Davies likely wouldn't go near it. On top of which, Cosette received a mostly negative response from Les Mis fans on publication.
The other option would be two novels published six years later, in 2001 in France. François Cérésa wrote a pair of sequels to Hugo's story, Cosette ou le temps des illusions (Cosette, Or The Time of Illusions) and Marius ou le fugitif (Marius, Or The Fugitive).
Only the former has ever been published in English, but these books saw Thénardier (Adeel Akhtar) return from America, Marius unjustly imprisoned – again! – and, most controversially of all, Javert resurrected, with Cérésa having the villain survive his suicide attempt and even find redemption through God.
Unsurprisingly, these books proved even more controversial than Kalpakian's earlier effort, infuriating Hugo scholars. Cérésa was defiant, though, calling his critics "intellectual terrorists" and telling The Telegraph at the time: "Javert's suicide always seemed too precipitate to me. I wanted to give him a chance to redeem himself morally."
As for the character's improbable survival, he added, "It's very easy to imagine that the temperature in the Seine on the day he threw himself in was not fatally cold. Someone could perfectly easily have dragged him out and revived him."
Regardless, the legal mire surrounding Cérésa's books means the BBC will probably be reluctant to touch them. Pierre Hugo, the author’s great-great-grandson, was actually awarded damages from the Parisian publishing company Plon for breach of “moral rights”.
"I hope to set a legal precedent for all descendents of celebrities, be they writers, artists or musicians, to protect the spirit of their forebears," he told The Telegraph in 2007.
Pierre was ultimately unsuccessful in his efforts to have the sequels pulled from bookshelves, but we can't see the BBC, and especially not Andrew Davies, looking to adapt these contentious works.
So while sequels to Les Misérables *do* exist in book form, the negative reaction they received means we've almost certainly seen the last of Cosette, Marius et al on television. And Javert? He stays dead, because, to quote the man himself, there is no way to go oooooooon!
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Instagram and Twitter account.
('You Might Also Like',)
