As if!

There's a bit of a kerfuffle going on, including a letter to the Radio Times (who have apparently received lots of letters about the same thing - one of my greatest fears is that I become the sort of person that complains about a TV programme to the Radio Times) that Lost in Austen is a blatant copy of the Thursday Next novels.

I find this ludicrous. The only similarity is that the action takes place within a book.

Jasper Fforde says (in the Radio Times):
"Although I was - until recently - the most current purveyor of the bookjumping concept, I was not the first. I thought the idea was wholly original until someone pointed out that Woody Allen, Luigi Pirandello and Alan Moore had written something along similar lines. More recently Cornelia Funke has joined the club with her Inkworld trilogy, and there are manga comics that also use the idea. Fantasy is the greatest genre ever, but it can be frustrating: you think you've found bold new territory, and then discover it's covered in footprints."

The Thursday Next books all carry a complex plot of which the bookjumping is a part, involved with other goings on which together form a clever, witty, fantastical story set in an entirely imagined world. I consider Jasper Fforde to be a genius for the way he constructs his tales.

Lost in Austen is a fairly straightforward story in which the character finds herself within a very well known book. That is the entire plot. It does not explain the mechanism, nor does it explain why, nor does it have literary allusions throughout. That's not to say it's not entirely watchable TV, but it is a simple story set in a world that has been long since imagined in great familiar detail. The final episode may explain many things as to how and why the switch was able to happen, but I doubt that is where they are going with it. That's no failing on the part of the writers, it's not that kind of story.

As far as I am concerned, anyone that says Lost in Austen is a copy of Thursday Next is unfamiliar with one or both and are speaking from an uninformed opinion. I would hazard a guess that these complaints have been formulated by those who would not consider watching Lost in Austen and who are therefore rather petty to complain about it. Sadly, I guess this is probably true for 99% of complaints about television programmes.