AN ACADEMIC VIEW OF BBC NORTH AND SOUTH - PART II.AUTHOR INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAY - ANNE O'BRIEN: ELEAN.CONSPIRACY (2001) - AT THE TABLE OF DEATH.JOHNSTON, CONSUMPTION - AUTHOR INTERVIEW & G. WHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING - ADAM BEDE (1992).VIRGIN WIDOW by ANNE O'BRIEN - BOOK REVIEW.BBC CASE HISTORIES - WHEN BRILLIANT BOOKS BECOME G.AT HOME WITH THE GEORGIANS - DISCOVERING LIFE BEYO.RA-NDOM THOUGHTS - OUR HERO, MANY HEROES.Yes, Jackson's butch and macho, but in terms of narrative focus he's displaced by strong women, symbolically castrated even. (.) he hobbles in the footsteps of the adorable, savvy yet broken 16-year-old Reggie, one of those lost girls with whom he always gets entangled. Even though Jackson is forbiddingly butch, he frequently gets beaten up or comes off second best in train crashes, and so finds himself being dabbed by appealing women. But surely there's something in the comparison.

'I think he's the opposite of Rochester,' says Isaac, who once turned down that role. I suggest to Isaacs that Brodie is a latter-day Rochester, a wounded beast whom wannabe Jane Eyres imagine nursing. In this interview at The Guardian, Jason Isaacs and Stuart Jeffries discuss Brodie's appeal to women (he has legions of female admiring readers) with an interesting literary comparison with Mr Rochester : His appeal (mostly to women) as Jackson Brodie is not proportional to his workout regime. He's interested in finding the closure for others he'll never get. As Atkinson stresses in the interview: ' That's why Jackson is not interested in forensics. He's everything but a knight in shining armour: he's fragile, funny, awkward, unreliable but he is a deeply good-hearted and extremely romantic character.

All and each of them reminds him of a very special girl he couldn't save in his childhood. Most of the cases Brodie finds himself involved in are of missing girls. ' A moral warrior', as the author herself says in the video interview above. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life marked by a family tragedy, he attempts to unravel disparate case histories. Jackson Brodie, played by Jason Isaacs(The Patriot, Harry Potter), is a complex character, 'damaged goods', a compulsive detective, haunted, traumatized.

Have a look at this video of Kate Atkinson and Jason Isaacs discussing the series To be definitely clear, no criticism nor disappointment, only I find the books let you go deeper into both characters and their stories. There were a few changes here and there in the scripts which I didn't mind ( Ashley Pharoah, writer of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, reworked Kate Atkinson's novels for television - read an interview here).

The series was very good, another great BBC production I liked a lot.

Kate atkinson jackson brodie series