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Booker Prize Winner Shuggie Bain Is Being Adapted For TV
Here’s everything we know about the BBC series so far.
Douglas Stuart’s harrowing debut novel Shuggie Bain, inspired in part by his own childhood, won the 2020 Booker Prize. And now it is being adapted for the small screen, courtesy of the BBC and A24. Set in the ‘80s, Shuggie Bain charts Stuart’s own experiences growing up with an alcoholic mother and absent father on a council estate in Glasgow. Described as a “heart-breaking story of pride, sexuality, addiction, and love,” the series is sure to be an emotional watch. But who will take the titular role and when will be it be released? Here’s everything we know about the BBC’s Shuggie Bain adaptation so far.
Shuggie Bain Plot
Inspired by Stuart’s upbringing in working-class Glasgow, the novel follows five-year-old Shuggie Bain as he traverses a tumultuous childhood that leaves him looking after his alcoholic mother, Agnes, after his father leaves the picture. Draining away “the lion’s share of each week’s benefits” on alcohol, as the synopsis reads, Shuggie, the “effeminate boy who struggles to fit in,” sees his mother as his “guiding light” and “cares for her as she battles with alcoholism while he struggles to become the normal boy he desperately longs to be.”
As Stuart told STV, Shuggie Bain is not autobiographical. “Agnes Bain is not my mother, but she is all the highs and lows, she reflects a lot of the strength and the troubles of the women I grew up around,” he explained. “The bravery, the glamour, the resilience, and also the pain and hurt.”
Shuggie Bain Cast
Casting has yet to be announced for Shuggie Bain, but Stuart is “thrilled to bring the Bain family to the screen” and is looking forward to “the opportunity to expand on my novel and to bring new threads to the story, exploring hardships and struggles as well as the compassion, humour, and resilience that is also central to the Scottish spirit,” as he told the BBC.
Shuggie Bain Release Date
Filming is set to take place in Scotland, but there’s no official release date yet. The BBC told Bustle that further details will be announced “in due course.”
In the meantime, you can familiarise yourself with Shuggie Bain’s writer in Douglas Stuart: Love, Hope & Grit. The recent documentary, which aired on BBC One on Nov. 14, sees Stuart take presenter Alan Yentob to places mentioned in the novel where he also grew up. The programme is currently available to watch on iPlayer.
