I HOPE the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People goes well — Rooney’s novels are deservedly popular, so the series could be good. But it is hard to adapt fiction to TV drama. I worry how Rooney’s deadpan way of describing emotional turmoil will translate to TV.

The forthcoming series having 12 parts might also stretch the story to meet the “box-set” format for marketing rather than aesthetic reasons. Still, the team behind the adaptation is strong: Rooney herself is writing the script. The directors are Lenny Abrahamson, who made a good film from the novel “Room” and Hettie McDonald who has a long, effective TV drama career.

Normal People takes a couple from teens to twenties in an on-off love affair. Rooney has been rightly celebrated as a voice for “millennials” because she can get across all the anguish, anxiety and confusion of young adulthood — including how people can hurt each other when they mean to do the opposite.