Happier ever after? JK Rowling’s Casual Vacancy joins league of rewritten stories

As the BBC gives Rowling’s adult novel an upbeat ending, we look at other rewrites, from The Little Mermaid to A Clockwork Orange

The BBC has injected a small slice of redemption into the bleak ending of JK Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, for its miniseries adaptation, produced with HBO. Screenwriter Sarah Phelps told the Radio Times: “It’s still heartbreaking, but I had to find some kind of redemptive moment at the end, that sense that after the tragedy, someone gets to stand with a slightly straighter back.”

Rowling’s story of the dark underbelly of an English town is not the first to be given a good shakedown by screenwriters. We won’t know how Phelps’s version matches up to the novel until 15 February, when its first episode airs, but here’s our selection of five screen versions that failed to stick to the original story.

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