RIVERS OF LONDON re-optioned for television

A fresh attempt is underway to bring Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London fantasy book series to the screen.

Two previous attempts was made to develop a series based on the books. The Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell team got as far as writing scripts before their attempt was shut down, and in 2019 Simon Pegg and Nick Frost optioned the rights for a deal before COVID delayed the process.

This latest attempt is a collaboration between Pure Fiction Television and See-Saw Films, with Aaronovitch's own production company Unnecessary Logo also involved. The option includes all nine Rivers of London books published so far and the associated short stories, novellas and graphic novels.

Unlike prior attempts, Aaronovitch himself will be more closely involved with this adaptation and will write the scripts for the first season. Aaronovitch has experience in this area, having previously penned two Doctor Who serials in the 1980s (Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield) as well as episodes of Casualty, Jupiter Moon and Dark Knight.

It should be noted that this is so far an option and development order, and no broadcaster or streamer is involved at this time.

The series to date consists of:

Novels

Rivers of London (2011)

Moon Over Soho (2012)

Whispers Under Ground (2012)

Broken Homes (2013)

Foxglove Summer (2014)

The Hanging Tree (2016)

Lies Sleeping (2018)

False Value (2020)

Amongst Our Weapons (2022)

Graphic Novels

Body Work (2016)

Night Witch (2016)

Black Mould (2017)

Detective Stories (2017)

Cry Fox (2018)

Water Weed (2018)

Action at A Distance (2019)

The Fey and The Furious (2020)

Monday, Monday (2021)

Novellas

The Furthest Station (2017)

The October Man (2019)

What Abigail Did That Summer (2021)

Short Stories

Tales from the Folly: A Rivers of London Short Story Collection (2020)

RIVERS OF LONDON tabletop roleplaying game to be released this year

Chaosium has announced that the official Rivers of London tabletop roleplaying game, based on Ben Aaronovitch's highly successful urban fantasy novel series, is coming this year.

The game was recently showcased at last week's Chaosium Con event in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The game uses the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition rules system, modified for this setting.

The Rivers of London series comprises nine novels, the first of which, Rivers of London, was released in 2011. It has been followed by Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016), Lies Sleeping (2018), False Value (2020) and the recently-released Amongst Our Weapons (2022). The series also comprises a sequence of novellas and graphic novels. The series has been a hit in both the UK and United States, hitting the Sunday Times bestseller list regularly. The series was optioned for television in 2019 by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, but has not made progress since then.

Chaoisum is one of the oldest tabletop roleplaying companies in the world, founded in 1975. Their best-known game product is the Call of Cthulhu line, based on H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. They also publish RuneQuest, Pendragon and 7th Sea, among others.

Chaosium Inc to adapt RIVERS OF LONDON as a roleplaying game

Chaosium Inc., best-known as the creators of the classic Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, has licensed Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London urban fantasy series for a new pen-and-paper RPG.

The game will use Chaosium's own rules set, customised to reflect the magic used in the books.

The game is at an early stage of development, so I'd be surprised if we saw it this side of 2021. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are also developing a TV series based on the books.

The Rivers of London series so far spans Rivers of London (2011), Moon Over Soho (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016) and Lies Sleeping (2018), as well as related novellas and graphic novels.

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg to adapt RIVERS OF LONDON for television

Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz, The World's End, Paul, Spaced) have re-teamed to produce a television adaptation of Ben Aaronovitch's urban fantasy series Rivers of London.

Stolen Pictures, the production company founded by Frost and Pegg to develop new projects, have optioned the rights to the series and are searching for a production partner. Currently the plan is to adapt the first novel, Rivers of London (retitled Midnight Riot in the US for no particular reason) across 8-10 episodes. Subsequent seasons may combine the narratives of several books.

For Aaronovitch, this is coming full circle as he began his writing career in the 1980s working in television, including writing episodes of Doctor Who. After some time out of the writing field, he returned with the Rivers of London series, exploring the adventures of Peter Grant, a young constable in the Metropolitan Police who is drafted into the service's undercover magic division under Thomas Nightingale.

To date the series comprises the novels Rivers of London (2011), Whispers Under Ground (2012), Broken Homes (2013), Foxglove Summer (2014), The Hanging Tree (2016) and Lies Sleeping (2018), as well as several novellas and graphic novels. 

RIVERS OF LONDON optioned for TV

Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London books have been optioned for TV. Feel Films has picked up the rights, possibly with a view to producing in cooperation with one of the main British TV networks. They are currently working on the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell TV mini-series for the BBC.

Aaronovitch is no stranger to television, having penned two serials in the final two seasons of the first run of Doctor Who, Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield, as well as episodes of Casualty and the SF soap opera Jupiter Moon. It is unknown if he will contribute scripts to the adaptation if it is greenlit.

The Rivers of London series, which features a British police officer who becomes apprenticed to the last serving sorcerer in the Met, has been highly successful. Three novels have been published so far: Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground. The fourth, Broken Homes, will be out next month.

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last government-sanctioned wizard in Britain and the guy who handles all the weird stuff the Met is clueless about, and his apprentice Peter Grant are on a new case. The body of a jazz musician is found with strong evidence that he was killed by magic. Grant, whose father is an influential 'almost made it' jazz musician in his own right, finds himself drawn back into his father's troubled life as he hunts down the murderer in Soho.


Moon Over Soho is the sequel to the recently-published Rivers of London (called Midnight Riot in the USA for reasons that have never been adequately explained), which made an impressive splash when it was released just three months ago. This series has been described as a British take on The Dresden Files and though there are vague similarities, the main difference between them is cultural: Aaronovitch lives and breathes London, its history and culture, and that comes out in his writing (not just here; anyone who's seen his Doctor Who TV serial Remembrance of the Daleks can see it there as well). London in his books, even this alterno-magical London of river spirits, chimeras and emotional vampires, is as much a character as Grant, Nightingale and the slowly-expanding recurring cast of semi-regulars.

As with the first novel, this is good stuff. The plot unfolds at a cracking pace, there are intriguing backstory revelations about Nightingale and the history of magic, and the characterisation is very strong. There's some effective moments of true horror, and Aaronovitch doesn't brush the consequences of events in the first book under the table. There's some simmering subplots (like Grant's awkward relationship with the river spirits, most notably Lady Tyburn who is in danger of becoming his nemesis) and the introduction of a presumably recurring villain, no doubt sowing the seeds of a multi-book ongoing storyline. In fact, this series is screaming out for a TV adaptation, so applicable is the structure of a stand-alone main plot with ongoing subplots combined with interesting characters.


There are some minor negatives: one plot twist - where Grant's judgement takes a jump out the window as he gets involved with a potential suspect - I assumed was the result of Grant being bewitched or put under a spell, but it appears not, so is just inexplicable. One bunch of characters - who have the potential to be a sort of jazz-playing equivalent of the Lone Gunmen from The X-Files - are introduced who appear to be important to the plot, but then don't do much here (I assume they'll be back later on). Nightingale has some key scenes but generally sits a lot of the book out. In this sense the TV correlation is less successful as there's a fair amount of loose ends left flapping around where their establishment doesn't accomplish much in this book (whilst others, like the setting up an ongoing villain, work much better). Still, we don't have too long to wait for the third book: Whispers Under Ground will be out in November this year.

Moon Over Soho (****½) has a more focused plot than the first novel but also feels a little more unresolved, so it evens out. It's still a relentlessly entertaining, fast-moving and enjoyable urban fantasy with intriguing hints of greater depth waiting to be explored. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Rivers of London/Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

Peter Grant is a probationary constable in the London Metropolitan Police Force who hasn't decided yet on what branch of the force he wants to serve in. A glorious career in the Case Progression Unit - who do the tedious paperwork other branches don't want - appears to be on the cards until a terrible murder takes places and Grant ends up taking a witness statement from a ghost.


Assigned to Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale - who deals with all the 'X-Files stuff' no-one else in the Met wants to touch with a bargepole - Grant finds himself tracking down a mystical serial killer with an old axe to grind...

Rivers of London - published under the somewhat less evocative title Midnight Riot in the USA - is the first original novel by Ben Aaronovitch, better-known to SF fans as a writer on the final two seasons of the original Doctor Who (and as the writer of the excellent Remembrance of the Daleks and its impressive novelization). It's the first in a recurring series featuring Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale as the Met's supernatural experts, with Moon Over Soho due in just a few months and Whispers Under Ground due early next year. It's a rather lazy comparison, but this looks like it could be the closest we have to a British version of The Dresden Files, with the notable exception that whilst Dresden takes a few books to bed in and really take off, Rivers of London is superb from the very start.

The book opens with Grant being dragged into the investigation into a spate of killings and random violence erupting across London. This leads him to becoming the apprentice to Thomas Nightingale, both the Met's resident supernatural expert and apparently the last proper wizard in all of Britain. Grant's education in the ways of magic and mysticism is played out in sporadic scenes alongside the developing plot, as he learns how to create balls of light, levitate things around and so forth. This is also an effective way for Aaronovitch to set out the rules of magic in his world: magic generates a sort-of EMP field that reduces silicon components back to their natural state, making it difficult (but not impossible) for magic and technology to coexist.


Aaronovitch makes the interesting choice to have Grant as someone who is very much aware of the SF&F genre, hence references to things like Doctor Who, The X-Files, the Twilight novels (vampires have a cameo in the book, but no more than that, thankfully), D&D and Cthulu. This could come across as a bit too knowing and a bit too nod-nod, wink-wink, but it actually feels pretty natural and works well. Aaronovitch also has that ability to make the story humourous one moment, dramatic the next and genuinely horrifying the next, spinning the story around and sending it off in a new direction just as you thought you knew what was going on, but always ensuring that everything makes sense.

The book takes its title from its main subplot: whilst Grant and Nightingale are hunting down the mystical killer, they are also tasked with repairing relations between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, using their tributary stream spirits (personified as the deities' sons and daughters) as intermediaries. This is a clever storyline which personifies parts of London as actual people in a similar manner to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, and is just as successful. Given that Rivers of London is also the title of the whole series (according to a couple of listings sites, anyway), I'm guessing these characters will return in later books, particularly the Lady Tyburn, whom Peter develops an antagonistic relationship with.

It's difficult to think of negatives. Perhaps the characters accept the existence of magic a little too readily, and maybe there's a few underdeveloped elements (some more info on Molly would have been nice). Otherwise, the book progresses along at a brisk pace, but is not rushed. Characterisation is strong, and Aaronovitch juggles the humour and horror very well. At one point he even trumps A Game of Thrones to provide the most shocking defenestration in the history of modern fantasy. His depiction of London is also excellent, painting the city and its history with affection without whitewashing the darker parts of its past (or showing any hesitation in reducing well-known streets to warzones). Also, whilst this is a complete novel, Aaronovitch seeds in some unresolved elements for later novels to pick up and develop.

Rivers of London (****½) is a page-turning, relentlessly entertaining novel which injects some vigour into the urban fantasy subgenre. It's available now in the UK and, under its dubious alternative title, in the USA.