Reflecting on how ‘Wilderness’ made its way from page to screen.

Beverley Jones

All Aboard!

You know what they say about buses. You wait around for ages then three come along at once. In my case, it was as I took a taxi ride through London that I saw Liv and Will staring back at me from the sides of a trio of double deckers – yes, my Liv and Will (aka the actors Jenna Coleman and Oliver Jackson-Cohen) ready to start their murderous road trip – the Wilderness TV showpromotions had begun.

By then the Wilderness journey, that had started in 2019, was close to its conclusion. Seeing my book/show on a bus was just one of the many surreal moments on the road that took my sixth thriller, about a dream road trip that turns deadly, from page to screen.  I imagine every author fantasises about seeing their work adapted for TV but, in a crowded market of murder and mystery stories, you know the chances are about as good as winning the lottery. Yet, almost five years ago, just as I was about to quit this writing lark and return to my PR day job, my agent called to say we’d had an offer from Firebird Pictures. Cue contracts and discussions then a rush up to London where, at an expensive Fitzrovia restaurant, the fabulous Liz Kilgarriff handed me a first draft of the script, penned by Marnie Dickens. Those two impressive ladies were captivated by my, frankly, dark and desperate tale of a wronged wife thinking about bumping off her cheating husband, and were determined to bring it to the screen.

Buckle Up.

From the outset I knew they were aiming high, with a glossy, big-budget adaptation. Honestly, at that point, I was just glad anyone wanted to pay me for writing books.

More surreal moments followed, such as the day in 2021 I got the phone call to say Amazon Prime had come on board to ‘Greenlight’ the production and provide the multi-million-pound budget, scaring the dog by dancing around the living room. The first time I saw ‘Liv and Will’ come to life outside my fevered imagination was at a Zoom ‘table read’ where the actors read through the first episode, a very weird moment for a girl who grew up in the South Wales valleys, as far from the glamour of anything remotely Hollywood as you could get. I sat in my box room (where, two years before, Liv had come to life on the laptop) and watched the lovely Jenna Coleman rage with betrayal and regret – did I have a little off-camera cry and a sneaky celebratory gin? Maybe… maybe two.

The ups and downs kept coming like those buses. Sadly, because of a Covid scare on set, my greatest disappointment was that I wasn’t able to take a trip to Vancouver in summer, 2022, to see the filming. Seeing the pap snaps of the New York shoot appearing in the British tabloids and entertainment websites, and being so far away, was frustrating to say the least.

Then – ta da! In December 2022 I got to watch the early edits in Firebird’s offices in London, where I might’ve had a little cry as Liv and Will raced into view in their snazzy convertible against the backdrop of the red-rock mid-west. (Not that I’m the sort of person who blubs all the time but I’d just found out, sworn to super-secrecy, that the mighty pop legend Taylor Swift had agreed to let us use her track Look What You Made Me Do for the title sequence!) As a writer, you spend a lot of time alone, arguing in your head with imaginary people. Then your imaginary people are suddenly real, it’s you book baby’s big day and you’re proud (and frankly disbelieving) that that’s your kid on the screen up there, and you hope no one will bully it on its first day or be mean to it.

Enjoy the Ride

One of the best things about the Wilderness rollercoaster was sharing the ride with the fabulous Jenna Coleman fans, who kept me up to date with every magazine article and, of course, those ‘Wilderbusses’ as we christened them, snapping the four-wheeled beasts in the wild and tagging me on social media from Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, London.

Then on an ordinary Thursday morning in late summer 2023, while I was doing the big shop in my local Sainsburys, there they were – a shelf of magazine covers featuring Will and Liv, so pretty, so deadly. I grabbed a handful of The Radio Times and other TV mags, resisting the urge to explain to the cashier that this was my show – she must’ve thought I was just a massive Jenna Coleman fan…

So, to the heart-in-mouth moment in the BAFTA auditorium, Piccadilly, last September, snapping a selfie in the front row as Will and Liv’s convertible shot into view on the big screen in front of a full house. (Then getting told off for taking a photo like a naughty school kid, because the usher had no idea I was the author and I wasn’t supposed to me using my phone.)

The night the show hit Amazon Prime my social media went wild. Hundreds of people were messaging and sharing. I heard from people I hadn’t seen since school or spoken to in years. Everyone was so happy and excited for me, yes, you’ve guessed it, I felt a tear in my eye. 15 bizarre minutes of fame indeed!

The Welsh Are Coming?

As this is a Crime Cymru blog, one thing I was never sure of was whether Liv would stay Welsh by the end of the process, as she is in the book. But the Firebird team wanted to keep Liv as was, even beefing up the role of her mum to give the marvellous Claire Rushbrook some great lines. (Not everyone liked Jenna Coleman’s accent but I thought she and Claire nailed it.) At the screening Q and A in London, someone in the audience asked the team why Liv was Welsh in the show. Marnie Dickens very graciously said, ‘Because she’s Welsh in the fabulous book by Bev Jones the Welsh author’. If I’d been asked, I might’ve answered him with a question; Why wouldn’t Liv be Welsh? Why aren’t more characters in international dramas Welsh? We’re out and about all over the world getting up to all sorts of (fictional) murder and mischief.

My fifteen minutes of fame have now sped on down the desert highway, but I hope Wilderness has played its part in blowing the Welsh crime fiction trumpet for a while. And all the Crime Cymru authors are blazing that trail with me – you wait for ages, then a whole load of us come along at once!

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Buy Wilderness here.

B.E. Jones Biography

Beverley Jones is a former newspaper reporter and BBC journalist who worked on all aspects of crime reporting producing stories for newspapers and live TV. She also worked as a press officer for South Wales Police, dealing with the media and participating in criminal investigations, security operations and emergency planning.

Now a freelance writer and novelist, she channels her experiences of ‘true crime,’ and the murkier side of human nature, into her dark, psychological thrillers set in and around South Wales. 

Wilderness is her sixth novel, followed by Halfway and Where She Went published by Little Brown.

Wilderness – Book Blurb

Two weeks, 1500 miles and three opportunities for her husband to save his own life. It wasn’t about his survival – it was about hers. 

Shattered by the discovery of her husband’s affair, Liv knows they need to leave the chaos of New York to try to save their marriage. Maybe the road trip that they’d always planned, exploring America’s national parks, just the two of them, would help heal the wounds. But what Liv hasn’t told her husband is that she has set him three challenges. Three opportunities to prove he’s really sorry and worthy of her forgiveness.

And if he fails? Well, it’s dangerous out there. There are so many ways to die in the wilderness. And if it’s easy to die, then it’s easy to kill too. If their marriage can’t survive, maybe he can’t either.