TV drama is the new literature, says Salman Rushdie

The author of Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses believes that, far from its “dumbed-down” image, television has become the medium for some of the most sophisticated writing today.

Sir Salman, whose accolades include the “Booker of Bookers” award, has switched his attentions from literary fiction to the small screen, currently working on a new science fiction series in America.

Hailing the writing quality in hit US series such as The Wire, The Sopranos and The West Wing, he described television as “the best of both worlds” giving writers the kind of control over plot and characterisation previously enjoyed only by novelists.

“In the movies the writer is just the servant, the employee,” he told The Observer.

“In television, the 60-minute series, The Wire and Mad Men and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

“You have control in the way that you never have in the cinema. … if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.”

His change in focus follows protracted struggles to secure support for a screen adaptation of Midnight’s Children, his magic realism-inspired take on the history of modern India, which is currently being made into a film to be called Winds of Change.

“[My agents] said to me that what I should really think about is a TV series, because what has happened in America is that the quality – or the writing quality – of movies has gone down the plughole.

"If you want to make a $300 million special effects movie from a comic book, then fine.

"But if you want to make a more serious movie… I mean you have no idea how hard it was to raise the money for Midnight's Children."

Philip Hensher, the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist and literary critic, said that the range of characters in some long-running US dramas is comparable to that seen in some of Dickens’ greatest works.

But he said that the constraints of television were likely to prevent it reaching the richness seen in the best works of literary fiction.

“I think he’s right hat the big Hollywood film studious are being much more risk averse in recent years and the television studios, for whatever reason, have come up with much more original things – maybe it is just a passing phase," he said.

“But against that I think they still haven’t got anywhere near to the range, richness and depth of the great novels and I just don’t see that happening.”

He added that while some American producers were turning out highly original material, the opposite appeared to be happening on this side of the Atlantic.

“It is difficult to imagine Dr Who being commissioned in the first place nowadays – it is just such a strange concept, the just wouldn’t buy it," he said.

“I think literature is operating outside those bounds, or has the possibility of doing so in a way that television largely doesn’t.”

Filming is due to begin soon on Sir Salman's science fiction series, to be known as The Next People.

He is also working on a memoir recounting the years he spent in hiding following the issuing of the fatwa, or edict, the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini condemning him as a blasphemer because of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

Philip Hensher, the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist and literary critic, said that the range of characters in some long-running US dramas is comparable to that seen in some of Dickens’ greatest works.

But he said that the constraints of television were likely to prevent it reaching the richness seen in the best works of literary fiction.

“I think he’s right that the big Hollywood film studious are being much more risk averse in recent years and the television studios, for whatever reason, have come up with much more original things – maybe it is just a passing phase," he told The Daily Telegraph.

“But against that I think they still haven’t got anywhere near to the range, richness and depth of the great novels and I just don’t see that happening.”

He added that while some American producers were turning out highly original material, the opposite appeared to be happening on this side of the Atlantic.

“It is difficult to imagine Dr Who being commissioned in the first place nowadays – it is just such a strange concept, the just wouldn’t buy it," he said.

“I think literature is operating outside those bounds, or has the possibility of doing so in a way that television largely doesn’t.”