Begbie To Get A Trainspotting Spin-Off Based On The Blade Artist

An interesting new project is in the works for fans of Trainspotting.

Whether one loves the book series or the 1996 cult classic film, everyone recognizes the ‘eccentric’ character of Begbie… who is now getting his own TV adaptation.

Actor Robert Carlyle, who played the role of Begbie in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting as well as its 2017 sequel T2: Trainspotting, announced the project during an interview with NME,

Irvine [Welsh] and myself have been chatting quite a lot recently with a couple of excellent producers in London about [continuing the Trainspotting story]. As you know, there was another book called The Blade Artist, which is just entirely about Begbie and his mad story. It’s still in its early moments, but it’s looking pretty good that this will happen eventually.

Robert Carlyle

Irvine Welsh has five books in the Trainspotting/Mark Renton series. The first novel came out in 1993, followed by the 2002 sequel Porno and the 2012 prequel Skagboys, with The Blade Artist being the fourth in the series, and another 2018 sequel Dead Man‘s Trousers.

The Blade Artist focuses on Begbie’s life since the Trainspotting days. He has reformed and rechristened as Jim Francis, a successful painter and sculptor, living in California with his wife and two daughters.

The show is still in early development, but Carlyle spoke some more about the direction it might go in and mentioned that production might begin sometime next year, 

I think we’re thinking about doing it as six one-hour ‘television event piece,’ as they say nowadays. Whatever that means. But it seemed to me to be right to look at it like that, and Irvine loved that idea. It’s such a massive story – it’s all Los Angeles back and forth to Edinburgh – and it’s difficult to do all that in an hour and a half! Especially if you want to keep the basis of that book pure.

Robert Carlyle

I think nowadays people like the event thing too – they like ‘six hours of this… bang.’ They can boxset it. They can binge it. So after a few chats, we thought that’s the way forward. So that’s the plan. Sometime in the next year and a bit we’ll hopefully be talking again and we’ll be talking about the return of Begbie.”

The book’s events unfold when Francis “crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly.”

Not much is known about the show yet, neither has there been an announcement about its official release date.