If you count prequels, Black Sails is an excellent example.
I have heard people say that about The Boys, but I haven’t read the comics or watched the final season so IDK.The Expanse
OK, the books are pretty good in themselves but the first few seasons of the show are amazing in storytelling, accuracy wrt their source and adding color through visuals, casting, voices/accents/dialogs… And Thomas Jane is perfect in his role of noir fanboy but also real detective.
edit: just want to make clear that I’m not saying that the books are bad or even worse than the show! I enjoyed both immensely. But rarely is a good book paired with a good show.
The show can see the future, which helps the early seasons a lot. Knowing what happens in the later books allows them to bring stuff forward. A great example of this is in the pilot when Avasarala is torturing a Belter and questioning him about stolen stealth tech. This is a character that doesn’t even appear in the first book and it is setting things up that don’t become important until book/season 4/5.
The authors being active writers on the show and senior producers on the later seasons also helps. They aren’t in charge, which means people with TV experience make the show work, but they keep the voice consistent. Regardless of who is credited as writer on an episode, nearly all Amos stuff in the first two seasons is written by one of the authors so that his mentality would be consistent. Throughout the whole run of the show, pretty much all the formal speeches are written by the other author.
The last thing that really helps them is the drive to be faithful to the story of the source without being slave to it. This leads to many small changes that slot actors they already have into story beats, giving the viewer more connection to what they see. Drummer, for example, is a tiny character in the books but the actress was great so they kept slotting her in instead of having a different Belter for everything. She even erased the existence of a main POV character and took on that role, outlived his role and just kept going. That then leaves his character design available, so he ends up being a major character in season 5, a completely different book.
We can thank Game of Thrones for a lot of that. One of the authors worked for GRRM for a while and was involved in his side of the early seasons of GOT. Even early on when it was well received, GRRM was getting frustrated by the changes the show was making without regard to knock-on effects. When selling the TV rights for Expanse, they fought to be in the room for both writing and production so that they could have a say when decisions were being made as opposed to just being asked for feedback after the fact.
The authors being active writers on the show and senior producers on the later seasons also helps.
Oh, I did not know that. Every movie/show I know where that is the case is a better adaptation and usually quite good.
edit: I did have some other specific example in mind but couldn’t remember it yesterday: The Handmaid’s Tale.
Dissenting view, I absolutely loved the books. Couldn’t stand the show.
I thought the first season was just OK, but after that it just went off the rails for me. The combining of different narratives from different books, the combining of characters and some of the casting choices just irked me.
Some of the casting was great (Avasarala being the best casting choice IMHO) but others were awful, such as Naomi (again, IMHO).
I’m glad others liked it, and I know I’m in the very small minority, but that’s OK.
I still have the books to go back to and re-read for a 4th and 5th time of I want!
Avasarala
I really should’ve mentioned her alongside Miller. She was amazing.
Also the supreme elevation of Camina Drummer. TV Drummer is the good shit and Cara Gee is fantastic.
But the show is also worse because of the pressure cancellation. They crammed in as much Laconia as they could and it’s not bad, but it does feel rushed and incomplete.
I didn’t see any Laconia?
They did Strange Dogs as one episode in the final season, and iirc very very briefly introduce Duarte, though I may be misremembering that.
Duarte in Laconia or still on Mars/working for Mars?
MASH
The boys. I found the TV show pretty decent, not great but decent, and the ending was great in comparison to the comics.
I have personally only seen people complaining about the ending. But regardless, I would generally agree.
Yeah same, I laughed with despair at the comics ending though so the TV ending being just ok was excellent by comparison.
The Handmaid’s Tale
For me it’s gotta be Goncharov, the way they adapted the movie into a series was uncanny, it really is Scorsese’s best work.
I think I liked Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015) about as much as I liked the book - but the book was far more substantive, so it’s hard to say if it’s overall better. But as TV adaptations go, it definitely should exist.
Most of the MCU offerings are way better than the comics they’re based off. I remember checking out Marvel comics after infinity war came out and my biggest impression is that most of them really aren’t worth reading.
Same for their TV shows. Loki and X-Men '97 are pretty good.
This one feels a little unfair since you’re comparing decades of history across dozens of characters, with so many peaks and valleys.
I considered bringing up Batman The Animated Series myself, since I agree with many fans that it’s possibly the best encapsulation of that character overall. But I still feel like the very best Batman comics, like Dark Knight Returns, beat it out as self-contained stories. Also there are side characters like Catwoman who definitely have better representations in the comics, because there they’ve had entire series devoted to fleshing them out.
On the Marvel side, I’d take Brian Micheal Bendis’ run on Ultimate Spider-Man over any film, but that benefits from being a full decade worth of monthly tales with a single extremely strong creative voice. Hard for a two hour movie to beat that.
Jaws. The characters in the book are very unlikeable, and the movie’s tone is much different helped in large part by John Williams’ amazing soundtrack.
Dexter.
I only read the first book about 15 years ago but I thought his brother being his identical twin was so stupid lol
Yeah, gotta agree. At least until the ending/final season.
And I like the books! They’re trippy and engaging. But in terms of the story being told and how well it’s executed, the show was just better done
Read the first two books, then started on the show. Quit after a few episodes.
I like the jurassic park movie more than the book.
Westworld
What book (series) is that? Or is it a comic? My web searching is failing me.
Oh hell very good point. It is based on the Crichton movie.
Aw, shucks. Was kinda hoping there was as a book series to dive into 😄
Why are half the replies in this thread about film adaptations? Are you guys illiterate or bots?
Why not both?
Men in Black
Very good films for sure, but what books are they based on? The 1990/91 comic? Or do you mean the conspiracy theory of the same name?
Yes, the films are based on the 1990 comics. Not to say the comics are bad, but they’re definitely outshined.
Assuming anime/manga counts: Frieren
The manga is really good, don’t get me wrong but the anime turned single page combats into all out super well animated fights with good music and great direction.
Anime definitely counts
