Birdsong (TV serial) Birdsong (TV serial) Birdsong is a two-part British 2012 television drama, based on the 1993 war novel "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks. It stars Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford and Clémence Poésy as Isabelle Azaire and was directed by Philip Martin based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan. The adaptation was produced by Working Title Films for the BBC and PBS's "Masterpiece". It premiered in January 2012 in the United Kingdom and in April 2012 in the United States. The television adaptation differs from the novel in many respects, completely omitting the section set in the 1970s. The story is told
Birdsong (novel) the published version did not fully do justice to the experience of war: it did not provide readers with "a full appreciation of the soldiers' physical experience; and, perhaps more importantly, a philosophical understanding of what it meant to be part of the first genocidal event of the century – the one that made the others imaginable". Because Faulks felt that much of the extant World War I literature was deeply influenced by World War II literature, he deliberately avoided research with secondary documents, such as historical monographs, instead focusing on veteran interviews and period primary sources. The novel was