David E. Kelley Book-Murders ‘A Man In Full’

In her remarkable novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke imagines a world in which book murder is a crime. They even hang a character for it. After enduring all six episodes of David E. Kelley’s Netflix adaptation A Man in Full, I’m ready for court.

Tom Wolfe published his superb novel A Man in Full in 1998. I was lucky enough to work at FSG when the book came out, and discerning readers will remember that I got to spend a day with Tom Wolfe. Yes, he dressed in a bespoke suit. I’ve mourned his loss a thousand times since, and especially when the Netflix series came to a screeching, appallingly stupid conclusion. I can only imagine his Brobdingnagian distaste for this call​i​pygian pile of shite.

The novel has characters from Atlanta to the Bay Area, from prisons to bank rooms, from a quail plantation in Georgia to a duet in Pittsburg, from Buckhead to Chambodia. The novel centers on Charlie Croker, a former football star who overspent on property when he married his second wife. It’s a brutally funny, bitter satire of wealth and poverty, with hints of racism and a looming crisis between a black mayor and a more liberal black challenger. There’s a putative date rape, a brutal financial workout, galas, rattlesnakes, stoicism, and Sally Lunn bread. Wolfe creates a magnificent universe and for once, has a likable character. At the moral center of this greedstorm is Conrad Hensley, a young father of two and an eventual acolyte of Epictetus.

Kelley’s ghastly adaptation of this masterpiece falls somewhere between Annie Wilkes screaming that Rocketman didn’t jump out of the cockadoodie car and a rewrite guy curing Beth March’s consumption. Imagine Mona Lisa, but made of Legos. Imagine any human as represented by Google Gemini, and you’ll have a small insight into how wretchedly Kelley has interpreted his book source. Six episodes was about seven episodes too many.

The problems begin with the casting. Miscast characters have dogged every Wolfian adaptation. The strong-chinned, broad-shouldered bonfire Sherman McCoy was played by…the rather petulant and always weak-chinned Tom Hanks. A louche British reporter was a fairly beefy Bruce Willis. A Man in Full take similar giant swings and misses.

Jeff Daniels is a passable Charlie Croker, but Diane Lane as his castoff wife Martha? Diane Freaking Goddess Lane? Martha Croker, in the book, looks like noted character actress Margo Martindale. Tom Pelphrey (who was so fantastic as a madman in Ozark) is a terrible madman here, plus they inexplicably change his last name from Peepgas to Peepgrass. His Boogie Nights turn in the final episode is ultra-cringe. Changing Conrad from white to black (Jon Michael Hill) is not much of an issue, but making him solidly middle-class rather than a young, working-class father of two completely skews the driving moral of the story.

Even if you never read the source material altogether and tried to watch this on its own merits – as I did with and had tons of fun with Kelley’s Lincoln Lawyer – A Man in Full is woeful at best. The characters are a muddle throughout, and behave in ways that make no sense. The racially-charged arrest that forms the core of the series is a tired trope, and the actors pantomime their way through scenes that are paint by numbers. Wolfe’s minute description of the complicated relationship between Atlanta’s black leadership is brilliant and gives characters like Roger (Too) White (Aml Ameel) and Mayor Jordan (William Jackson Harper) heft and depth. Here they are shallow and flat. Even Kelley’s signature courtroom antics fail to move.

In short, this isn’t even worth a hate watch. Read the book and move on from this sacrilege.