Adam Dalgliesh - Media Adaptations

Media Adaptations

All of James's novels featuring Adam Dalgliesh up to and including The Murder Room have been adapted for television, beginning with Death of an Expert Witness in 1983. The first ten novels (in the order shown below) were adapted by Anglia Television for transmission on the ITV network and starred Roy Marsden as Dalgliesh. The BBC took over the series in 2003, and Martin Shaw played the role in Death in Holy Orders and The Murder Room. The television adaptations have not always been faithful to the novel they dramatise, partly because they are out of chronological order.

• Death of an Expert Witness: Dalgliesh leads the hunt for an elusive strangler in the Norfolk Fens.
• Shroud for a Nightingale: Dalgliesh becomes entangled in a deadly murder hunt inside a training home for nurses.
• Cover Her Face: Dalgliesh follows a young girl and a trail of death to a beautiful country home.
• The Black Tower: A reckless move in the drugs trade turns into a dice with death for Dalgliesh.
• A Taste for Death: Dalgliesh sets up the Sensitive Crimes Squad and faces an immediate challenge.
• Devices and Desires: Holidaying in Norfolk, Dalgliesh is caught up in a series of murders when he discovers a body.
• Unnatural Causes: Dalgliesh is drawn into a macabre murder case during his investigations into a currency scam.
• A Mind to Murder: Dalgliesh is called in following the grotesque murder of a middle-aged woman.
• Original Sin: Dalgliesh discovers a body whilst investigating a series of alarming hate mail attacks on a poet.
• A Certain Justice: Dalgliesh becomes involved in the death of criminal barrister Venetia Aldridge.

Robin Ellis played Inspector Dalgliesh on BBC Radio 4 in Cover Her Face and Devices and Desires dramatized by Neville Teller. Richard Derrington took over the role of Inspector Dalgliesh in A Taste for Death and The Private Patient.