Dick Francis: Blood Sport

It seems like producers once envisioned a longer series of movies sourced from Dick Francis novels, since they called this part of "The Dick Francis Mysteries", but in the end they only made three.

They made the decision to use only one character as the hero for all three books, allowing them to stick with the wonderful Ian McShane, at that time lately of his popular Lovejoy shows ... which were themselves based on a series of novels about an antiques "divvy".

This book replaces a government agent with a Jockey Club investigator, and generally follows the course of the book, although they never explain the objective of the criminal conspiracy as well as the book did. While many details are changed, there are quite a few characters and scenes that at least remind you of the book. Ian McShane is good, as always.