It’s been a best- selling hardback, and...

It’s been a best- selling hardback, and it’s been released in paperback. Now, “Paradise Postponed” arrives as an 11-part TV series, opening the 16th season of “Masterpiece Theatre” Sunday at 8 p.m. on Channels 24 and 50, 9 p.m. on Channels 15 and 28.

Actually, author John Mortimer wrote the novel and the TV scripts almost simultaneously. “Paradise Postponed” is his idea of “what happened to the paradise we were promised when World War II ended.”

The plot finds Michael Hordern (on the cover) as a rector who dies, leaving a mysterious will and a baffled family. Annette Crosbie, David Threlfall and Colin Blakely are also in the cast.