Emma Forrest's upcoming novel Father Figure to become TV series

See-Saw Films has acquired the rights to adapt Emma Forrest's new novel Father Figure into a television series. Father Figure is a coming-of-age thriller that centers on Gail, a troubled scholarship student at the prestigious all-girls school Saint Saviours. Gail is impulsive, easily bored, and longs for real connection; she’s at an age where she wants to be picked up by men but still wants her mother to take her home.

In this story, she crosses paths with Ezra, a wealthy, powerful and successful man who is still haunted by the recklessness of his own youth. Ezra is deeply concerned about his teenage daughter Agata, who joins Saint Saviours. When Agata goes to school there, Gail and Ezra’s lives become dangerously intertwined.


Emma Forrest

The adaptation of Father Figure will be handled by See-Saw’s label Fanboy, which is headed by executive producer Patrick Walters. Fanboy is known for the successful series Sweetpea for Sky Atlantic and is also working on an adaptation of Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King by Harry Trevaldwyn.

Emma Forrest's novel Father Figure will be published on July 3 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. Forrest is also an executive producer on the television series.

Emma Forrest spoke enthusiastically about the collaboration, saying she was “as excited as an unstable teenage girl” to be working with a team that feels her material so well and whose ambition and aesthetic match her own. Patrick Walters called Father Figure an incredible novel and praised Forrest as a unique talent he has admired since her book Your Voice in My Head. He expects Gail to take the screen with great strength and energy as a character.