This presentation will discuss what the legacy of Les Misérables can contribute to how we understand adaptation as a cultural process. Drawing on research into the afterlives of Hugo’s novel and the growth of adaptation studies as an academic field, Stephens asks: who gets to decide if an adaptation is good or bad, or indeed if an adaptation even is an adaptation in the first place, and why do these questions matter to fans and scholars alike? Neither the 1995 Claude Lelouch film or the 2019 Ladj Ly film retells Hugo’s novel straightforwardly, yet both play with and invoke its social conscience, dramatic characterisation, and artistic imagination. In constrast, the BBC/PBS TV 2018 miniseries, written by Andrew Davies and directed by Tom Shankland, positions itself as a faithful and definitive retelling of Hugo’s story; Davies laid claim to offering a ‘proper’ or ‘classic’ adaptation while openly mocking the stage musical as a ‘shoddy farrago’. Such a legitimising claim can be challenged for its artistic and ideological assumptions about how adaptation should work, and for how it can divert attention away from the creativity that all adapters rely on. Through these contrasts and the tensions they generate, Stephens emphasises the ways Les Misérables invites us to ask how we personalise stories and make them meaningful to ourselves and to one another as part of its humanitarian spirit.