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WATCH

Family values

At more than 1,300 pages, Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel A Suitable Boy, a sprawling saga that involves the interlinked fates of four large Indian families, may not seem the most obvious candidate for adaptation as a six-part TV drama. But that’s to reckon without Andrew Davies, who previously condensed down Tolstoy’s War and Peace for the BBC, and director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding).

The story they tell together is set in the north of the country in the early 1950s, as India is about to go to the polls in its first democratic general election. These are heady times for university student Lata (Tanya Maniktala), coming of age at the same time as a new nation coalesces after the colonial era and partition.

Lata’s mother is determined to find a husband – the ‘suitable boy’ of the title – for her daughter. But Lata herself