Andrew O’Hagan’s bestselling 2020 book Mayflies has been called ‘that rarity: a novel about death that is life-enhancing’. Written as a eulogy to his friend ‘Tully Dawson’, it concentrates on a group of teenage boys at the climax of their youth, their friendships built on music, film and rambunctious spirits. It’s set in two parts – the first in 1980s small-town Scotland, O’Hagan’s own Ayrshire, and then when they reconnect three decades later. O’Hagan has described it as ‘a love letter to male friendship and what that means’.
Mayflies won the Christopher Isherwood Prize and adds to the Esquire editor at large’s long list of accolades for fiction, non-fiction and journalism. Three of his novels have been Booker Prize nominated.
Faber & Faber Mayflies: A MAJOR BBC DRAMA FOR CHRISTMAS 2022
Now Mayflies has been turned into an intimate and moving two-part BBC drama, starring Martin Compston, Tony Curran and Ashley Jensen.
O’Hagan spoke to Esquire ahead of its airing this week.
Adaptations of anything have a chequered history. At what point in the process did you think ‘I’m going to be alright here’?
That thought arrived twice. First, when I read the scripts and realised the story could work for TV. Most novels don’t, and the screenwriter Andrea Gibb was fearless in tossing things out and putting things in. The second moment was when I heard the actors doing the read-through. Collectively, they just understood what it was all about. Such good actors.
Did seeing the series come to life make you think about your story differently?
In a few respects, yes. I saw much more clearly the female points of view, how resistant they were (even more than I’d written) about the ‘boy’s club atmosphere’ around Tully’s end-of-life decisions. I also thought differently about how memory can work: the series plants the vivid 1986 stuff in ways that defines the adult characters, where I did it the other way round. Technical stuff like that can be quite thrilling.
You’re condensing a 288-page novel into two hours of TV. That requires some sacrifices. How painful was that?
Not much. I was sad to lose the Sicily scenes — that holiday was like a reflection of their teenage adventures in the book — but you become pretty realistic on a show like this, especially when you’re serving as an executive producer. For me, the leading force in all of this was [Bafta-winning production company] Synchronicity Films and it’s head, Claire Mundell. She set the stage for a gifted director, [multi-award winning Scot] Peter Mackie Burns, and drew the whole thing together.
People who only know Martin Compston as DI Steve Arnott from Line of Duty (“Cause of death wasn’t clear”; “Well cutting his head off can’t have helped”, etc) are about to have their own heads turned around by his role as Tully’s wingman Jimmy. He’s amazing, isn’t he?
Yes, totally. Martin has been in the business since he was a kid, doing brilliant stuff, and he just has an instinct for where the camera is and how to inhabit a character. He does it so economically, so truthfully, and I think this is his deepest performance so far. He brought integrity to the whole production and was lovely to work with. He’s also good fun to hang out with, as is the superb Tony Curran. I was knocked out by how beautifully they blended as actors.
He and Curran, who plays Tully, are real-life mates, right? Can you explain what that bought to Mayflies?
It was everything. They understand each other’s magic, and that’s impossible to fake. Tony is just so warm and infectious in his vitality — very Tully, in that way — and Martin was a natural comrade. They could finish each other’s sentences. As Tully gets sicker, James (as okayed by Tully) slowly becomes the more dominant pal, and they achieved that dynamic without breaking sweat. To me, that’s the gold standard — like watching a pair of international footballers work the field and set up a goal.
Three times now I’ve watched the “Some people are just stars…” speech during the wedding in Episode One. Three times I’ve been reduced to a blubbering mess. It’s not very Christmassy, is it?
Au contraire, Johnny! People love a blub at Christmas, and there’s only so many times you can watch It’s a Wonderful Life. This is a season when the sad shit goes with the joy, and Mayflies might find a place in all of that. On the other hand, it’s nice to make a bid for the least Elf-like film of the year!
Mayflies is about male friendship, and how crap men are at saying they love one another. Just taking a wild stab here… you must have been inundated by guys thanking you for expressing that, and helping them try to fix it?
I’ve been in the writing biz a fairly long time and I’ve never had a reaction like this. Guys are constantly writing to me saying the book has turned them on to reading, or switched them on to their own pasts. I wanted the book to open up a new channel in how men talk about emotion. I hope it’s done that, even a wee bit, because the whole toxic masculinity thing — though important — doesn’t describe most of the men I know.
Depressingly for almost anyone else with any ambition to be a writer, you allegedly turned out Mayflies during lockdown – a ‘minor’ project as a break from your magnum opus, Caledonian Road. What can you tell us about that?
That’s not exactly true: Mayflies took a year. But I did do it during a break from a big novel I’d been working on for six years, Caledonian Road. It just seemed right to do it that way. Caledonian Road is now finished, and it’s a big social novel of our times, about five families in modern London. It draws on years of research in royal palaces, prisons, country estates, in sweatshop factories, and with drill gangs, with oligarchs and migrants, in the art world and the British media. All these characters drift slowly together. The book was for me a big new adventure in journalism and fiction. It will be out in spring 2024. The screen rights, for a multi-series drama, have just gone to Johan Renck, who directed Chernobyl for HBO.
Elon Musk being all over the news makes me think about The Secret Life: Three True Stories, your collection about digital provocateurs. Notably the considerable amount of time you spent with Julian Assange. Would you fancy having a crack at Elon?
I would. It’s been a while since I climbed into the bunker with a tech nutjob. I’m ready to do all day and all night with Elon as he goes about putting an end to human communication.
Andrew O’Hagan mega-fans will be delighted by your cameo in Mayflies. How was that, and what ‘souvenir’ did you keep from the set?
On the day they were shooting the wedding scene, I accidentally turned up in full wedding attire, you know, like a six-piece suit and polished shoes. The director got the hint. I was summoned by the costume department. A flower was fixed to my lapel. I was good to go. It turned out Ashley Jensen’s character [Tully’s partner, Anna] needed a brotherly figure to walk her down the aisle. Of course, the gods of show business have a way of getting you back — there’s no such thing as a free walk-on — so I’ve been routinely described in some newspapers as Ashley’s character’s father! We’re the same age, so I will rush to point out to you how young Ashley looks.
The cliché is that pop music embeds itself during your formative years, whenever they may be, and those songs are with you for life. But music was just better in the 1980s, wasn’t it?
Unquestionably. I mean, there was a time when New Order, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnymen, and a dozen other brilliant bands all had singles out in the same week. I mean, come on! You’re lucky now if there are two great songs a month! Music was better and the best of it carried a whole political and political culture with it. British music was a thing of heavenly important. So there you go. I’m a dyed in the wool fan of the great days of British music, and I hate all the bed-wetting nonsense and jangly beige Suffolk soul-lite shite that passes for genius now.
Which TV show has the second most powerful ending?
Six Feet Under had a brilliant, all-time, humane ending, showing a kind of flash forward of all the main characters to the end of their lives. I do like an ending. I’m still recovering from Bet Lynch’s departure from the Rovers Return in 1995.
What would the real Tully have made of all of this?
He would’ve adored it. Like all working class heroes, what he really loved in life was a good drama.
Mayfliesairs on BBC One at 9pm on 28th and 29th December. Both parts will be on iPlayer. The novel is published by Faber & Faber
