I dunno if this is something other people think about but I often find one or two shows every year that I kinda want to watch but never do and part of the reason is because I’d much rather it was in book form.
Like Awake on, NBC?, I think. I’m not that interested in the show but the concept intrigues me and if it were a nice 3 or 4 book series, I would be gobbling them up. Once Upon A Time sounds like a great show that would be a great light fantasy series and if I found it in the library, I would check every book in the series out immediately. But on television? Eh.
Is this something other people feel? Or am I weird? And what shows would catch your interest more if they were books?
Personally, I’d like to see a literary version of Numb3rs, with actual mathematical details included, though I’m not sure such a thing would be easy to write.
The Sisters Grimm is a series of books by Michael Buckley which is a lot like Once Upon a Time. (It came out first, however, and is ongoing.) It’s aimed at children, but is reasonably sophisticated and enjoyable to read.
The Sopranos would have been better as a book (or series of books) because then the writers wouldn’t have had to punt when Nancy Marchand died and divide her character’s traits between Uncle Jun and Janice, who should never have been an ongoing character.
That being said, the ending wouldn’t have been nearly as powerf
The Sisters Grimm is a series of books by Michael Buckley which is a lot like Once Upon a Time. (It came out first, however, and is ongoing.) It’s aimed at children, but is reasonably sophisticated and enjoyable to read.
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There’s also Bill Willingham’s Fables, a comic series that is in the same general area and is more explicitly meant for grown-ups. (It was going to be turned into an ABC tv series for a while.)
Not that it’d necessarily be better as a book, but I’d love a novelization of *Carnivale *that finishes out the story and fleshes out the world.
I will keep both The Sisters Grimm and Fables in mind the next time I am at the library. Thanks for the suggestions.
(I really do love fractured fairytale stuff. I even read the novelization of the 10th Kingdom movie.)
That was the first thing that came to mind, and I absolutely think it would work better as a book. It had a very elaborate mythology that mostly didn’t make it into the show, and I’m presuming a lot of that had to do with the fact that on TV, you have to work exposition into dialogue. If Carnivale were a book, the author could take their sweet time in laying out the mythology in narration. As it is, you have to look for interviews with the show’s creator or read his pitch document to understand what the hell was going on with avatars and bloodlines and vectori and such. “Vectori” as a word never was uttered on screen in the show.
Also, a book wouldn’t have been cancelled due to budget.
