Jamie Fraser is Real! Outlander Mini-Series Being Filmed

Allow a fan-girl a moment to gush.  I've only just heard the news!

I've been instantly transported back several years.  My friend Shonna paused just long enough to check that I hadn't read Diana Gabaldon's books.  Then she went out and bought me the first three.

That was how confident she was that I would love them.

I opened the pages of Outlander and began to read. In truth, the first couple of chapters seemed fairly average. Well written, but not enough to be causing this much of a fuss. Then I read just one line and everything turned on its head.

I was hooked.  I couldn't breathe until I'd found out what would happen next.  I read that book over my meals, on the toilet, while walking from my car to my place of work, propped up on the windowsill while I brushed my teeth, everywhere. 

At one point, my boss at the time came over to my desk and told me that she really had no more work for the next hour or so.  She suggested that I read my Diana Gabaldon book. That was the first and last time that ever happened!  She knew damn well where my mind was. She'd spoken it with a twinkle in her eye!  So I sat at work and read.

Moreover, whenever I wanted a cigarette, I had to go outside.  I'd lean against a wall reading, oblivious to anyone who passed by.  The receptionist of the building collared me. "Whatever that book is, can I borrow it next?"  She asked. "The look on your face tells me that I have to read it."

So she did.  She read it while on reception. Everyone who entered the building saw her expression and most of them asked to borrow it next.

Those books spread like a wave throughout the campus. Everywhere you went, all you could hear were discussions about it.  The names of Jamie and Claire popped up in the most unexpected corners.

They really are that good.

The story begins in the aftermath of the Second World War. 

Claire and her husband Frank are holidaying in Inverness, getting to know one another again. Most of their seven years of marriage were swallowed up by the war.  Claire was a nurse stationed first in Britain, then in France. As an officer, Frank was sent all over Europe.

So now it's quiet, as they pick up the pieces in Scotland.

Until, that is, Claire visits some local standing stones and the world turns distinctly insane. It takes her a while - during which she's assaulted, abducted, set to nursing duties and dumped on the outskirts of a skirmish - to realise that she's now in the 18th century. By a while, I mean an hour.

Meanwhile, Claire has already found an ally.  Her first patient is Jamie Fraser, a young and towering Scottish man with a dislocated shoulder and musket ball injury.

The two are like chalk and cheese, but put them together and it really works. You will spend half of your reading time giggling and the rest going 'awww'.

Ask me and I'll tell you that Outlander is a time-travel story, laden with delicious and beautifully narrated history. But that is only a tiny facet of it.  Ask the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University (yes, my rapt expression sent those books nearly all the way to the top), and she'll tell you that it's a swash-buckling, action novel.

We're both right. Plus the people who'll label them a romance, or a military series - those battles are described in precise detail - or... add your genre and there will be something in there for you.

Given the sheer number of my friends and family who have now read the Outlander series, you can imagine the reception to the news that it's being dramatized.

My own initial WOOOOOTTTTT!!!! was slightly tempered by the fact that it's the US cable channel Starz doing this.

I've encountered them before, when Torchwood crossed the Atlantic.  Though, to be fair, it was creator Russell T Davies who really messed that one up, not his American financiers.

Diana Gabaldon appears thrilled to bits with the situation, which is always a major plus. However, she's not involved with writing the screenplay for the adaptation, which is a minus point. That's going to be Ronald D Moore, who is mostly famous for writing the script for Battlestar Galactica. I'm not sure that the two correspond enough to judge this one ahead of time.

There's already been a hint that things will get changed in the transfer from novel to screen.  Angus Mhor has been described as a bit of a drunkard.  He's also reduced from the tallest man ever encountered by Claire, to being played by an actor just 5' 8".  His part will be expanded.

In itself this snippet isn't too worrying, but as an omen of things to come, it's seriously got me biting my lip.

Starz is an American cable company, but it's taking advantage of newly introduced film industry tax breaks in Britain.  That means that yes! Outlander is being filmed in Scotland.

From October 2013, the cast descended for a 38 week schedule on the Scottish town of Cumbernauld.  The old Isola-Werke factory, in the Wardpark area of the town, was converted into a movie lot.  It's in there where different sets recreate the 17th century, as well as the 1940s.

Hopefully they'll nip to the real locations, whenever they actually crop up.  After all, Cumbernauld isn't a million miles from Loch Ness.