Welcome to Friday Debate, a feature on cup of tea with that book, please, where every Friday a question will be posted that tantalize the brain and expands our horizons. For this week’s question:
Many new TV shows that are going to premiere this year are adapted from books. For some, this is a book lover’s dream. The opportunity to see their favorite book acted out is hard to pass up. But for others, it can be seen a tragedy. No one ever gets an adaptation correctly, a statement that holds true with the best ones. But, they are enjoyable to the point that they are called classics.
However, they are ones that turn out so bad and you wonder “what were they thinking?”. That has happened to me on more than one occasion, most particularly, Pretty Little Liars. I enjoyed the book series and really like the TV series until it stopped making sense and ended up frustrating me all the time. The torture was over when the show ended. Imagine my surprise when it was announced that not only a spin-off was in the works but the new show will consist of joining two books, both from the same author, but from two different worlds. I mean, they joined two different book titles to make one TV show. What was the point in that?
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists is not the first TV show to do this. Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and HBO’s Big Little Lies have gone beyond the books due to their huge success. Because of this, I feel that is one reason why we are seeing an uptick of book adaptations (the other is Hollywood is just running out of ideas).
So this interesting dilemma leads me to ask these two questions.
It doesn’t bother me when a TV adaptation deviates from the books, as long as it serves the story. Things that work on the page don’t always translate well to the screen (and vice versa).