Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Several book series have been adapted for television, and plenty of fans of those series love watching those shows. If you’ve tuned into any of them yourself, you’ll know that some are extremely faithful to the original series. Others use the main characters but create entirely new plots for them. And that choice does divide readers. Some don’t mind at all, and others dislike it.

There’ve been a number of adaptations of Agatha Christie’s work. One of them features David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. This show lasted for 13 series and included her short stories as well as her novels. In some of them (e.g. Murder in the Mews), the characters and plot line stay fairly close to the original story. In others, there are major changes. For instance, in the novel Death in the Clouds, Jane Grey is a London hairdresser who wins the lottery and chooses to take a holiday in France. That’s how she ends up on a flight during which another passenger is killed. In the television adaptation, she is a flight attendant. There are other changes, too, some of them important, between the Christie books and some of the episodes. When the television production strays from the original plot, that bothers some fans, but not others.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series is often considered a classic of the legal mystery sub-genre. It’s drawn millions of fans to crime fiction, too. Beginning in 1957, a television adaptation of the show, starring Raymond Burr in the titular role and Barbara Hale as Della Street, was aired for nine seasons. In fact, it’s television’s longest-running legal drama. There was also a series of Perry Mason television films aired between 1985 and 1995, also starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale. Some of the episodes are quite faithful to the novels. Others, though, were written specifically for the TV series, and are not based on the novels (although they do, of course, feature Perry Mason and Della Street). Apparently, the show was popular enough, and long-running enough, that the writers needed to create new material.

Some of Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn novels have been adapted for television, too. Like the book series, the television series features Joanne as a single mother and university professor who is drawn into investigating murders. In this case, there are some major differences between the series as Bowen has written it, and the television series. For one thing, the television series gives Joanne a different backstory (she’s a former police officer in the TV series, but not in the books). It also features a major character (Joanne’s former police partner) who doesn’t exist in the books, so some of the plots are quite different.. The television series also takes place in Ontario, rather than in Regina, which is the setting for the books. For some people, those changes are not a problem; for others, though, they detract from the adaptation.

Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope book series has been extremely successful, both commercially and critically. The television adaptation has also done very well, is considered of high quality, and has lots of fans. Many of the episodes are based on the novels and stay fairly close to them. Others, though, are not based on the books, although they do feature the main characters in the books. For many fans, this is fine; they love the show, they love Brenda Blethyn in the role of Vera Stanhope, and they think the TV plots are engaging and absorbing. There are those who’d like the show to stay closer to the books, but it’s been a highly regarded television show overall.

I don’t think I could do a post on television adaptations without mentioning the Inspector Morse series starring John Thaw as Morse. The show aired from 1987 to 1993, and overall, stayed quite faithful to the books on which it was based. That could very well be because Colin Dexter, who wrote the series, was deeply involved in the television production, even helping to choose Thaw for the main role. Since then, there’ve been two spinoffs of the show:  Lewis, which follows the story of Sergeant (later Inspector) Lewis after his career with Morse; and Endeavour, a sort of prequel to the Morse series. Those shows are based on Dexter’s characters, but otherwise not based on the books. They’ve been very popular and critically praised as well. Fans don’t mind that they are not based on books.

And that’s the thing. Some television series stay very close to the original source. Others, on the other hand, stray, some quite far, from the original novels. There are many, many more I could have mentioned. I know, I know, fans of the Dalziel and Pascoe series, the Rizzoli and Isles series, and the Inspector Rebus series, and so many others. They vary in how closely they follow the books, but they have in common that they become quite popular, and they draw fans to the genre.

What’s your take on this? Is it important for you that a TV adaptation stay very close to the novels on which it’s based? Are you content letting a television series be its own entity, even if it has the same characters as a book series? I’d love to read your views on this.

*NOTE: the title of this post is the title of song by Genesis.