It’s Thursday and I’m back with a new Thursday Movie Picks feature post. This series is hosted by Wandering through the Shelves and offers you a weekly prompt to post some movie recommendations/talking points according to the theme. Usually, you are supposed to post about 3-5 examples, which I find a very manageable amount.
As it so happens, we change it up once per month and talk about TV shows instead of movies and today gives me the great opportunity to talk about books I would like to see adapted into a TV series. There’s many, many I would like to see, but not all of them are suitable for the TV format. Many are better for movies, but I still have plenty of ideas. I’m going to try my very best not to go overboard. Emphasis on try. But to make it easier for myself, I’m going to stay in the SciFi and Fantasy realm.
Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown
Those of you who have followed me for a while, know how much I adore this series. It grabs me every time and makes me feel emotions I usually don’t feel access that much. From what I know, it has been in the talk to be adapted for a movie, before Pierce Brown shut that down, because they would have changed the essence of the story too much. After that, I heard rumors of it being developed for TV, but news have been scarce on that front since.
Either way, I want a show and I hope they won’t make an animated one, because I want a live action one more. I especially hope they will ignore the height difference between the different colors and will cast Richard Harmon as my favorite Sevro. I’ve been championing for this for years!
My Red Rising reviews:
Monsters of Verity by Victoria Schwab
August Flynn is one of my all time favorite characters. I just want to adopt and coddle him, but I also genuinely think that the Monsters of Verity series would lend itself well for TV. There is a lot of freedom of what could be explored beyond the two books and a rich world full of intriguing monsters and heroes. I’d sure love to see it come to life on the screen.
My Monsters of Verity reviews:
Wolf by Wolf duology by Ryan Graudin
I think we’ve seen that alternate reality shows about WWII work quite well, just look at The Man from the High Castle. This is obviously targeted at a younger audience, but would raise great talking points. While the book had several issues with the German language, that’s not anything that wouldn’t be easy to remedy in a show. The characters were great for sure!
My reviews for the duology:
Jackaby Series by William Ritter
Jackaby is like Sherlock meets Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency? Two shows I absolutely adored and would therefore love to watch something in a similar realm. The books are definitely not that well known, but they are so much fun!
My Jackaby (mini-)reviews:
The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
While I definitely don’t agree with everything Maggie Stiefvater says on the internet and elsewhere, I think a show could do great things with her books as a guideline (but not sticking to it entirely faithfully if you ask me). Somehow, I just picture them on a small network like syfy with a fresh new cast of faces. I’d really like to see someone appreciate my ghost boy.
My Raven Cycle reviews:
Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
Alright, so this is me cheating a little bit, because Netflix IS releasing Lore Olympus as an animated series soon. For those who don’t know, it’s a web comic that you can read for free here. It’s a modern retelling of the tale of Hades and Persephone and I have fallen utterly in love with it. However, I’m a sucker for live action adaptations, so I’ve started to cast the characters in my head already.
So, aside from Geraldine Viswanathan as Persephone and Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Hades, I’d like to put forward Sam Claflin as Zeus and Paul Mescal as Poseidon. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
Life and Other Disasters 
I would like to see the raven cycle on screen too! I love those aesthetics that you have added tho!!
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Thank you so much! They’re all old aesthetics that I’ve used for other posts before (but for the same books) and I thought it was a shame not to use them more haha
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Nice theme within the theme! Unfortunately outside of The Mists of Avalon fantasy isn’t my bag and horror is usually a hard no as well…..I do like Oliver Jackson-Cohen though.
You are very passionate about you picks and that’s great but I very much doubt I’d watch any of the adaptations unless they snagged a really great cast.
I tried to not stick to one genre this time out so I have one saga, a humorous mystery and a biography though all center on a strong female character (or in the case of the last, person).
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley: In Illinois of the mid-1850’s clever, fiercely independent Lidie (Lydia), only 20 but already considered a spinster by her sisters, marries abolitionist Thomas Newton after a very brief courtship and departs for the wild and wooly Kansas Territory. Upon arrival they find a place on the verge of statehood but with hostilities erupting between the “free-state” abolitionists and Missouri’s pro-slavery factions. As a rough and tumble frontier confronts the pair in “Bleeding Kansas” Lidie becomes immersed in the societal, political, psychological, ethical, and economic conditions that led to the violent conflicts while both trying to find her place in the world and survive the tumult.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley: Time: summer of 1950. Place: the once grand English mansion Buckshaw. 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, lover of everything to do with chemistry and a passion for poison but zero patience for older sisters Ophelia and Daphne who she sees as twits, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird found on the doorstep, a postage stamp pinned to its beak, followed shortly afterward by finding a dying man lying in the cucumber patch. Flavia, both appalled and delighted, turns instant sleuth. Atop her trusty if ramshackle bicycle “Gladys” she starts searching for clues but starts to worry when the trail seems to point in an unwanted direction. First in a series of adventures featuring Flavia, followed by The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag and 8 others, this could be a great comic mystery miniseries.
Mrs. Adams in Winter by Michael O’Brien: In 1797 English born Louisa Johnson married rising politician and future sixth president, the brilliant but difficult, John Quincy Adams and took up life as a diplomat’s wife in far flung locales. In the winter of 1815, Louisa left the Russian city of St. Petersburg with her 7-year-old son Charles to travel via coach to Paris, nearly 2000 miles away across a Europe dangerously torn from the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat and exile. In the 40 days it took her to reach Paris she learns to arrange her own affairs, loses babies to illness and miscarriage and graces the highest courts in Europe as the wife of the American ambassador meeting Russian Czars, Prussian Kings, British Princes and Rhineland Electors. Based on her personal diaries, letters and essays.
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Oliver Jackson-Cohen is one of my favorite actors, which I never really expected. He’s in so many horror movies and shows, which I can barely stand, because horror also isn’t my thing. But for him, I braved some content.
I think we talked about your enjoyment of autobiographical/biographical content before, right? I could see you possibly liking a book I just finished recently and would personally watch a movie from. It’s called Ballad of the Whiskey Robber and is about a Transilvanian Hungarian who was an ice hockey player and bank robber. Very interesting story!
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Thanks for the recommendation! Sounds interesting, I’ve added it to my (very long) want to read list on Goodreads so I won’t forget!
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I would like to see a Red Rising TV series as well, but I think it would work better animated. At the very least, it would be a good way to work around actors’ schedules and not spend a million dollars on CGI every episode.
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While I hear you and understand where you’re coming from, I really do not want it animated. I think I wouldn’t watch it if that’s all I got. I see shows like Foundation and See etc. on Apple TV+ and I know great live-action SciFi content is possible on streaming platforms. I have very specific visuals in mind for Red Rising and I don’t think any adaptation will manage to check all my boxes, but for me to stay interested, it would have to be live action at the very least.
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Well, better pray to the streaming gods and hope for the best.
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This is such an interesting week because I’m hearing about a lot of books for the first time. i’m not familiar with any of these picks.
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My blog is very mixed in its content, so I am sort of part of the book blogging community as well and I promise you, at least 3-4 of those picks are WILDLY popular haha but that’s just the thing. Depending of which corner of the interwebs someone hangs out in, it can be a very different experience. I felt so generic making these picks haha
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JACKABY TV SERIES!!! ❤ This would be the dream and maybe get more people to read the books! I’m also reminded of how much I miss Dirk Gently’s, I wish we had gotten more seasons 🥺
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CARO! I’m still waiting for your full reaction of reading The Dire King! You better keep me informed once you get to it ❤
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Yes!! It’s on my September TBR – so soon 👀
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YEEEEES
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This Savage Song would make for such a fascinating series/movie! We still need to see what ADSOM will be like on the big screen but I’m convinced someone will pick this duology at some point. 😛
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I’ve just never been as interested in ADSOM as everyone else it seems haha my monster boy was always more intriguing to me. However, I’m going to look forward to seeing if the casting of Holland will hold up to what I picture in my head. I have a soft spot for villains with a decent backstory.
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I’ve never heard of any of these before but I’m definitely adding some to my reading list.
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Most of them (but not all) are pretty popular young adult series. Which ones have caught your eye?
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I am so here for a Raven Cycle adaptation!
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I once heard it got optioned, but then it was forever quiet. I hope they’ll actually make it happen though.
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This is such a good list! I’d love to see an adaptation of The Raven Cycle, I think the atmosphere of it all, if done right, could be extraordinary. This Savage Song would be awesome, too! Well… I think that I would be way too chicken to actually watch that one, but still, hahaha 🙂
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Thanks, Marie! 🙂 I feel like I went with a lot of popular series, because I think there could be a real audience for them. I heard once that The Raven Cycle got optioned, but then, like so many other projects, it never went anywhere. I would LOVE to watch all those shows. And as I tend to now watch and read and consume a lot of darker material, I don’t think I would mind the nightmarish things in This Savage Song haha
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[…] TMP – TV Edition: Books I Want to See Adapted Into a TV Series & Are Sebastian Stan and I compatible (readers)? (Kat @ lifeandotherdisasters) […]
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I’ve read the Monsters of Verity series, but it wouldn’t be the top Schwab’s books I’d want to see adapted. That would be the Villains series
I love The Raven Cycle and would love to see a TV adaptation, but I definitely would not want it to be on SyFy…all their shows look terrible with low production values except for The Expense which has since moved to Amazon.
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