I genuinely can't see a television series working, as without the quality of AF's characterisation it would simply be Improbable Adventures of an Insufferably Smug, Comfortably-Off Family. Think of trying to write Nicola for the screen - without the dispassionate, terribly accurate analysis of her fierce loyalties, ethics and shynesses we get in the novels, she'd seem just another fearless, improbably-talented blonde school-story heroine. And Lawrie would just be a dipstick, and Ann a plaster saint, and Rowan the bossy games prefect.