Thanks to all of you who have emailed me about the prospect of a TV series based on my Roy Grace books. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes about the possibility of a Roy Grace television series, but please do not expect it to happen anytime soon. At the moment I am biding my time until I can be assured that everything about the television adaptation will be just right. I care very deeply about the Roy Grace series of novels and I want to ensure that when the series is made that it is faithful to the books, and that the character of Roy Grace is played but an unknown, rather than having a famous actor play him as just another of the many roles of his career.

I also want to ensure that the accuracy of police procedures that I strive so hard to put into my book is reflected in any series. I find it incredible how poorly researched some of our biggest crime series on UK television are. One particular bête noire of mine — and any tv writer, producer or director reading this, please take note: For many years now any serious crime scene in the UK is immediately cordoned off with Police tape. A scene guard is posted, who will be a uniform PC or PCSO, who signs everyone in and everyone out. He has authority to refuse entrance to anyone — and I mean, ANYONE, including the Chief Constable of his county, not dressed in protective clothing. Those white SOCO all-in-ones are not there to protect delicate Scene of Crime officers from getting dirty: They are there to protect the crime scene from outsiders contaminating it. So when David Jason, as Frost, blunders into a crime scene in which SOCOs are at work, in his old brown mac and his brogues it really shows someone hasn’t done the most basic of homework — and I think it is insulting to viewers.

Of course writers of crime novels and of their television adaptions have to take poetic licence. Most of the work of senior investigating officers is deskbound — it is the minions who go out and about, interviewing people. So I have to make Roy Grace more proactive than would be usual for someone in his position, but I explain why he likes to be hands on.

I certainly plan to write some of the series, and to story edit all of it, and to be on set in a producing capacity. I talked a little more about the possibility of a Roy Grace television series in this interview with Screen International.

I will post information up here the moment there is any progress on the series.