Books You'd Love to See as a TV Series and Why

When I was younger, I was absolutely confused as to why there wasn't an animated Harry Potter tv series. Not with the characters from the books, though. More like a Saturday morning cartoon, with a couple of random new Gryffindors as the main characters and some Slytherins as antagonists (for some reason I've had one "plot" stuck in my head, where the Slytherins mess with the Gryffindor's potions. That's all I remember of it though).

And I think that the books would do much better as a TV series/Mini-Series More time to explain stuff. Maybe starting off with a 3 or 6 episode season for book 1, and then increasing the amount of episodes to correspond with the length of the books?

An anime version of John Ringo's first series, "The Legacy of the Al'Denata." It should probably NOT be Japanese Anime, because it'd just strike the wrong chord there. Too much Right Wing-ness in it.

It's a "realistic" depiction of what would happen if aliens actually visited the United States. Given the subject matter, it'd be easier to do animated than live action. There's a lot of littl subjects that crop up throughout the series that could be handled better in episodes, like the nature of politics, and the aliens themselves.

edited 6th Aug '12 3:27:38 PM by Journeyman

The Vorkosigan Saga. Because why the hell not? It has never been made into a film series. Which baffles me given the "quality" of some Hollywood movies recently. Hint, hint, Star Wars Prequels cough cough.

Hell, just make the first two, "Shards of Honor" and "Barrayar", and I would be your friend for all of time itself.

The better Star Wars Expanded Universe novels - the X-Wing ones and The Thrawn Triliogy. They've got too much plot packed into them to be done effectively as movies, and the original actors are too old to come back, so an animated TV series or miniseries might work.

The X-Wing ones are awesome because they mix a lot of action with hilarious scenes and do a good job of character development to boot, and typically have fairly intricate plotting. The Thrawn Trilogy captures the feel of the original trilogy more than any other expanded universe work, gets the main characters' personalities spot-on, and introduces a few wonderful original characters including the Expanded Universe's best villain. It's also very intricately plotted, yet everything fits together extremely well.

I really like both of them because they have intelligent heroes facing off against intelligent villains, which runs counter to the norm of having the heroes mostly win due to the villains being dumb.

The thought of a TV (or film) version of Vorkosigan Saga actually scares me, because I find it hard to imagine it being done anywhere near right! In general, a lot of my favorite books are things I'd rather not see adapted for TV! On the other hand, I'd love to see someone like Peter Dinklage play Miles... :)

(He might be a litle old for the role, though.)

To even begin to play this game, I have to imagine an unlimited budget and access to the best screenwriters in the business, and a minimum of Executive Interference and Bluenose Bowlderizing. Then I can suggest things like The Vlad Taltos series, Vatta's War, and maybe (maybe!) Uplift.

There's still stuff I'd rather see them just not bother with though, since so much of the beauty is in the way it's written. I'd put most of the works of Jack Vance in that category, for example.

Animorphs reboot...with a budget above $20.

Also a Codex Alera series would be smashing, though I would rather that get a movie series.

Well, if no live action casting agency can achieve the miracle that got every single Harry Potter character absolutely spot on (eventually - the earlier Voldemort wasn't as good as Ralph Fiennes) - nothing else would do the saga justice, then turn it into an anime. Multi-season, story arcs, the works. Would knock spots off just about everything out there.

Animorphs. Preferably animated and, y'know, with a budget.

Well, I don't personally think that a Discworld series in general would do especially good, on account of having so many characters and storylines.

On the other hand, the Night Watch could get their own series.

Also, I think that while Moving Pictures couldn't possibly survive as an actual television show, I think it would make an absolutely fantastic little adaptation-like mini-series. Y'know, like that one place did with Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters. But live-action instead of animated, if the budget would allow it.

edited 24th Aug '12 7:59:46 AM by TwentyTwoSevenths

There have been several Discworld adaptations already. The animated ones (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music) didn't do much for me, but the live action ones I've seen (Colour of Magic and Hogfather) weren't bad. Colour of Magic had Sean Astin as Twoflower and Jeremy Irons as the Patrician, among other reasonably notable names. The live-action version of Going Postal is supposedly out, though I haven't seen it on this side of the pond yet.

Discworld fans, rejoice.

Squee! Open the champagne, everyone!

Discworld of course. But each series would focus on one book. Like 6 episodes for Guards, Guards. And another series with 6 episodes for Witches Abroad, etc. And to film them around the same time so that actors can easily guest star in an episode where their character pops in.

You could have a full season for each Harry Potter book. Especially if the writers reworked the earlier years to better foretell events in the later years. Of course we'd need some streamlining of the cast, but it'd be possible.

After seeing Game of Thrones, I vote for Codex Alera, so that it didn't have to lose the complexity by adapting to movie length. Problems would be accusations of GOT plagiarism and the special effects.