Robert Carlyle has confirmed that a TV series spin-off of Danny Boyle’s 1996 feature adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s 1993 novel “Trainspotting” is potentially on the way.
Carlyle first appeared as the character Begbie in the film about a group of Scottish heroin addicts and reprised the part in Boyle’s 2017 direct sequel.
The Begbie character also appears in Welsh’s 2016 novel “The Blade Artist” where he’s now reformed, living in California and goes by the name Jim Francis. Tragic events force him back to Scotland and confronts his past.
That book is now the one being potentially turned into a series as it’s a story that can’t be told in feature-length. Carlyle tells English music mag NME:
“Irvine and myself have been chatting quite a lot recently with a couple of excellent producers in London about [continuing the Trainspotting story]. As you know there was another book called The Blade Artist which is just entirely about Begbie and his mad story. It’s still in its early moments but it’s looking pretty good that this will happen eventually.
It’s such a massive story – it’s all Los Angeles back and forth to Edinburgh – and it’s difficult to do all that in an hour and a half! Especially if you want to keep the basis of that book pure.”
He adds that they’re thinking about doing it as a six-episode television event piece. “The Blade Artist” marks one of five books Welsh penned about the Trainspotting characters.
