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British screenwriters adapting China-based Judge Dee novels for mainland TV

Robert van Gulik’s Tang-dynasty detective is being brought to the small screens of a very, very large audience

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The production team of the 40-episode Judge Dee series include (from left) writer Dudi Appleton, producer Wang Donghui, executive producer Patrick Irwin, script editor Andrew Clifford and writer Jim Keeble.

In 2013, following a full year of negotiations with the author’s son, Beijing-based producer Wang Donghui secured the rights to make a Chinese television series based on Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik’s series of Judge Dee historical mystery novels.

He also had one of China’s biggest TV stars, Zhang Jiayi, on board as his producing partner and to play Judge Dee.

With the huge popularity of crime shows such as Sherlock and CSI on Chinese streaming sites, Wang believed he had the beginnings of a popular historical detective series that could raise Chinese-language television to the level of premium cable drama in the West. But who could write it? Nobody in China had that kind of experience.

“I looked at writers in both America and Britain – but while American writers are good at scale and structure, British writers excel in character development and that’s what I needed for this project,” explains Wang, who worked at Creative Artist Agency (CAA)’s Beijing office before launching production outfit Combo Drive Pictures.

He started firing off emails to writers he admired, including Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton, whose credits include writing Thorne, for Sky1, and Silent Witness, for the BBC. But it took a long time before anybody took him seriously.

It wasn’t until British talent agent Tor Belfrage visited Beijing and met Wang in 2014 that the ball started rolling. She immediately contacted Keeble and Appleton’s agents, saying: “Will you answer this guy’s emails? He’s for real!”

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