10 TV Shows That Were Right To Deviate From The Source Material
9. True Blood Alan Balls adaptation of Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse series, also known as the Southern Vampire Mysteries, deviates in several significant ways from the novels, co-opting several of their major and minor storylines and splicing them into entirely different places in the narrative. These really are entirely different beasts. While a set of novels can focus on the core relationships between a key set of individuals, a television drama tends to work best with a small central group surrounded by a larger supporting cast to add variety and depth. You can skim through a short novel in an afternoon: commitment to a ten-episode TV show is a longer commitment. Ball recognised that the humour and conflict he needed came from those characters, and not from the convoluted plotting of the novels, so he chose to base each season of his show on those characters and their relationships, and to strip out what plot and mythology he needed from the novels to advance that objective. Thats why bit part friend Tara was promoted to Sookies best buddy for the TV show, and why the acerbic, flamboyant Lafayette escaped the death laid out for him at the beginning of the second novel to survive the entire series. Sookie and Bills relationship on the show, at least for the first few seasons, is far stronger than it is in the books. Bill is less of a cold fish, more relatable: in many ways, thats true of many of the central characters in the show. True Blood probably went off the rails around season four: but until that point, character and conflict provided the basis for most of the drama and the comedy of the show. Sex, blood and sudden death was just the icing on the cake.