Screenwriter Tom Edge Talks New Strike Adventure The Ink Black Heart

It’s Not A Game

Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike returns for a new TV adaptation this week, The Ink Black Heart, and here’s its screenwriter Tom Edge on the new series courtesy of the BBC website…

How did you approach a book that is, not ostensibly, but to a large degree, set in the world of online chat rooms?

The book has a puzzle piece game that Jo is playing, which gets to the heart of online identity, and the point at which it clashes with the real world. There is a game in the book of puzzling out who the real person is connected to, their online identity and their username. That becomes important for Strike and Robin. But that’s very difficult to realise on screen.

I think the core of the story that she that she wanted to tell, we were able to achieve without stacking everything on that particular game.

There’s a lot of stuff in the book about parasocial relationships, which is when people who are online become deeply attached to a content creator or a game, some other community, and they begin to form relationships that have an enormous intensity, both with each other and with those who are the creators of the content, supposedly in charge.

I think those relationships are fascinating. Jo also has a lot to say about the disjunct between how we behave towards one another as human beings in real world communities – and what we’re prepared to say to each other’s faces. The value and function of common courtesy and manners and how when responsibility for your actions, having to own the words that you say to someone, is stripped away from you.

What very quickly can creep into that space is a loss of any sense of responsibility – almost a gamification of those relationships. So that even if the game being played is destroying someone by pulling them apart and turning people against them, because you don’t have to deal with the human consequence of seeing their distress, it can stay as a game for you.

As a society, we’re only really beginning to reckon with the impact that has on people – in particular, young people. And young people are a big core of the fans of Drek’s Game within this narrative.

What elements of the adaptation did you find the most challenging?

It’s always a challenge, but it’s a lovely challenge. I think Tom and Holliday are so good that even in the earlier stages, there’s a delight in knowing how much they will be able to deliver.

There’s a high degree of confidence as a starting point for which I’m really grateful. I think this season between Robin and Strike is a really interesting one because it begins with Strike’s attempt to kiss Robin and her pulling away from that, and that creates this gulf between them.

It creates an awkwardness and a disconnection. What it also does is force them both to think very clearly about what they feel and what to do about that. And for Strike, it is the decision to try and flee from it.

In previous series we’ve seen him bury his feelings in women he doesn’t care about, or booze. And now we see an attempt by him to return to those patterns, but he can’t sustain them anymore.

We see his body literally breaking down under the strain of it and take him to a point where the truth of what he feels is no longer something that he can run from.

And Robin’s journey sits almost in counterpoint that she sees that her feelings for Strike can destroy everything and has to force herself to actively step into a world where she does date again.

So, both of them are trying to run from something that is essentially true.

There’s a really interesting subplot in this book where Charlotte returns and requires Strike’s help to gain dirt on her ex-husband under the threat that the divorce proceedings will otherwise ruin Strike’s reputation and his agency, making it impossible for him to operate.

So, all of the dysfunction that lay within his relationship with Charlotte, and which is not yet fully put to bed, becomes something that jeopardises the agency that he and Robin have built together. The relationships conducted by Strike, if they’re done with his customary dysfunction, have the capacity to create vast destruction.