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Walk through a cinema lobby or listen in on any pub conversation and you’ll hear it, the constant complaint of the booklover. Stay very quiet and you may even be able to hear it now, carried along ghost-like on the wind: “The book was better!” Wherever a screen adaptation exists, somebody, somewhere will be complaining that it isn’t as good as the novel on which it was based.
“The book was better” is such an established perspective in fact, that you might question why TV producers even bother to take out options on novels at all. They do it, of course, because of the titles below, TV dramas that wove gold from, and in more than a few cases, improved on, their book inspirations.
We’re not including non-fiction books or comics here (there are so many of those that they deserve their own separate shout-outs), just shows that used novels or novel series as the starting point for some truly great television. Faithful or revisionist, modernised or period-set, these are the shows that future TV adaptations could learn from.
21. Sharpe (1993 – 2008)
Based on: The Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell
How’s this for a mark of adaptation success? Actor Sean Bean became so indivisible from the character of Richard Sharpe that novelist Bernard Cornwell admitted to writing the later entries in his Sharpe book series specifically for Bean’s voice and delivery. That’s how entwined the screen and page Sharpes became. It wasn’t just exemplary casting (not only Bean but also Brian Cox, Pete Postlethwaite, Daragh O’Malley…) that made this Napoleonic era-set period spy series an excellent adaptation for ITV, but the perfect meeting of form and content. 90-minute episodes filled with intrigue and action allowed audiences to spend enough time with the Major (later Colonel) to really get to know him and to get absorbed by the cleverly evoked period setting. – LM
3. Game of Thrones (2011 – 2019)https://www.denofgeek.com/books/best-book-to-tv-show-adaptations-ever-made/
Based on: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
George R. R. Martin is a frequent target of the internet’s frustration. The legendary fantasy author, whose A Song of Ice and Fire books were the basis of HBO’s Game of Thrones, has thus far proven unable to make it past book number five in his planned seven-part series. While it’s certainly unfortunate that the book narrative remains stalled in 2011’s A Dance With Dragons, sometimes that criticism can lose sight of an important fact: Game of Thrones rules.
Despite only just ending in 2019 (and carrying on in multiple spinoffs), this HBO epic already feels like something out of another era. Blessed with a big budget and an even bigger imagination, this saga about the kings, queens, knights, and dragons of Westeros stands out as the last true “watercooler” TV experience. – AB
A TV crime drama partly filmed on the Isle of Man will be shown later this year.https://www.three.fm/news/isle-of-man-news/island-to-appear-in-sean-bean-tv-show/
The BBC's This City Is Ours stars Sean Bean and James Nelson-Joyce, and follows the story of a Merseyside crime family.
The eight episodes are 60 minutes long and will air in the BBC later this spring.
Part of one episode was filmed in Douglas last year.
The official Spanish release DVD/Blu-Ray of "Buffalo Kids" is available from Amazon Spain:
https://www.amazon.es/Buffalo-Kids-DVD-P%C3%A9rez-Ullod/dp/B0DQLD4TKT
According to the product details, the film includes both Spanish and English audio tracks.