Thursday Movie Picks - TV Edition: Books You Want To Be Adapted Into a TV Series
This week's TV theme from Wandering Through The Shelves is exciting! Today we get to put our hopes out into existence with what books we'd like to see adapted into TV shows. Here are a few of mine that I think would make wonderful limited series. Come through, HBO!
1) Life Sentences - Laura Lippman is probably my favorite author. I love mysteries, and hers are so readable. One of her books was already adapted into a pretty good movie - Every Secret Thing - But it's Life Sentences that I think would make a good mini series. It's one of her most interesting books and there's plenty of amazing parts for actresses that I would love to see.
2) The Lovely Bones - Sure, the movie was ~fine~ but Peter Jackson was not the director for it. Let a female showrunner and writer take Lovely Bones to the small screen and give us what we should've had with the movie.
3) The Sundown Motel - This is a more recent read for me and it was a fun mystery/ghost story that I think would be a wonderful fall mini series.
I have not read any of these and I also haven't seen Lovely Bones movie adaptation. But the third one sounds quite interesting!
ReplyDeleteI think you'd really dig The Sun Down Motel!
DeleteI also went mini-series. I really like the movie of The Lovely Bones. I don’t know your other 2 but I all for mysteries and ghost stories. I am marking down the 3rd book.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of mini series in general. that way they don't have the time to get bad.
DeleteI agree on The Lovely Bones and I think it would make a great series. I've been wanting to read The Sun Down Motel too!
ReplyDeleteI hope you like Sun Down, I blew through it pretty quickly. Couldn't put it down.
DeleteI'm only familiar with The Lovely Bones which I loved when I listened to it on audio. I've avoided the movie like the plague because I've heard so much negative word of mouth. I'm not sure its special quality is adaptable into any other form.
ReplyDeleteGhost stories aren't really my thing but I'm intrigued by your first choice, I love mysteries as well. I'll have to add it to my (lloonngg) Goodreads to read list.
Adapting a beloved book is always a dicey proposition. A perfect example is that two of my favorites-East of Eden & Pillars of the Earth-have received the miniseries treatment with wildly varying results. Eden was wonderful and Pillars one of the worst things I've ever seen completely bastardizing the story.
Be that as it may I did come up with three-two fictional and one historical-that I think would be good subjects for adaptation.
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley: In Illinois of the mid-1850’s clever, fiercely independent Lidie (Lydia), only 20 but already considered a spinster by her sisters, marries abolitionist Thomas Newton after a very brief courtship and departs for the wild and wooly Kansas Territory. Upon arrival they find a place on the verge of statehood but with hostilities erupting between the “free-state” abolitionists and Missouri’s pro-slavery factions. As a rough and tumble frontier confronts the pair in “Bleeding Kansas” Lidie becomes immersed in the societal, political, psychological, ethical, and economic conditions that led to the violent conflicts while both trying to find her place in the world and survive the tumult.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: Time: summer of 1950. Place: the once grand English mansion Buckshaw. 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, lover of everything to do with chemistry and a passion for poison but zero patience for older sisters Ophelia and Daphne who she sees as twits, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird found on the doorstep, a postage stamp pinned to its beak, followed shortly afterward by finding a dying man lying in the cucumber patch. Flavia, both appalled and delighted, turns instant sleuth. Atop her trusty if ramshackle bicycle “Gladys” she starts searching for clues but starts to worry when the trail seems to point in an unwanted direction. First in a series of adventures featuring Flavia, followed by The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag and 8 others, this could be a great comic mystery miniseries.
Mrs. Adams in Winter by Michael O’Brien: In 1797 English born Louisa Johnson married rising politician and future sixth president, the brilliant but difficult, John Quincy Adams and took up life as a diplomat’s wife in far flung locales. In the winter of 1815, Louisa left the Russian city of St. Petersburg with her 7-year-old son Charles to travel via coach to Paris, nearly 2000 miles away across a Europe dangerously torn from the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat and exile. In the 40 days it took her to reach Paris she learns to arrange her own affairs, loses babies to illness and miscarriage and graces the highest courts in Europe as the wife of the American ambassador meeting Russian Czars, Prussian Kings, British Princes and Rhineland Electors. Based on her personal diaries, letters and essays.
Laura Lippman is awesome. I love reading her novels. I haven't read any of your picks this week, but they sound like they'd make interesting series!
DeleteThe Lovely Bones as a film SUCKED!!! I think if it was in the hands of a female director, it would've been something different and not like the book. Lynne Ramsay was supposed to helm a version of the film as she had a manuscript copy of it and then the book came out and Steven Spielberg got the rights and got Peter Jackson involved to helm it. Knowing Ramsay's body of work, the book would've been right up her alley but Jackson fucked it up.
ReplyDeleteI'm still sooooooooooo bitter we didn't see Ramsay's version. Give her this TV project!
DeleteI could 100% see a limited series for The Lovely Bones! I loved that book and think that Stanley was phenomenally creepy, but there is definitely room for improvement.
ReplyDeleteYeah Tucci was great. The entire case was honestly. I wish we could do it over with them, especially Saoirse as Susie, she was wonderful.
DeleteI'm a bit ashamed to admit that I've never read a Laura Lippman novel in my life.
ReplyDeleteCheck her out! I really love her.
DeleteNice picks! The Lovely Bones would be a great series. It's kind of hard to believe it hasn't been in the works at HBO or Hulu. But it definitely needs a female showrunner. I haven't heard of the other two picks, but they sound cool.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely a must for The Lovely Bones. I hope a dude never tries again. lol
DeleteI remember seing The Sundown Motel at the bookstore but somehow I never got around reading it.
ReplyDeleteI'd be 100% down for a new take on The Lovely Bones!
It's a really good book! highly recommend.
DeleteI like The Sundown Motel but I prefer her previous book The Broken Girls more.
ReplyDeleteIf you like The Sundown Motel, I would also recommend Please See Us which is also a spooky mystery crime thriller.
The Lovely Bones - Jackson had made too CGI heavy among other things.
I liked The Broken Girls as well. I'll have to add Please See Us to my list!
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