10 TV Shows That Were Right To Deviate From The Source Material

4. Constantine

Constantine may only have lasted for a single season (there are still superfans plotting to save it, but€ c€™mon guys) but it made an impression amongst DC comics fans, even managing to get its titular con artist/magician John Constantine a guest appearance on The CW€™s Arrow last November. Several of the stories from DC€™s horror mainstay of yesteryear Hellblazer (a stablemate of Preacher in their alternative/adult line Vertigo) were translated to the small screen for NBC€™s take on the supernatural, but the central difference between the two was the protagonist himself. Depending on the writer, Constantine has been varying degrees of b*stard over the years, and had varying degrees of mastery of magic itself, but the comic has always fundamentally been about three things: that the world is screwed; that messing with magic can only make it worse; and that you can€™t trust John Constantine. Comic book Constantine is crap in a fight and can€™t drive. He makes friends with the cavalier charisma of the born con man and burns their lives down with the same contemptible carelessness. Sometimes he feels guilty, sometimes he doesn€™t; sometimes he€™s on a delusional, half-assed quest to save the world, but most of the time he€™s just trying to escape eternal damnation and have another cigarette. The fact of the matter is that Constantine is a nasty piece of work. The Constantine of the TV show was never going to be that guy. Sure, Matt Ryan looked like Constantine, dressed like Constantine, even sounded a lot like Constantine (unlike Keanu Reeves in the still-surprisingly-good 2005 feature adaptation of the same name)... but he was too on the ball, too nice, too good with a right hook. This show was always going to be too formulaic to bring us the real JC. Anchoring a supernatural mystery show in the vein of long-running CW hit Supernatural and 2007€™s The Dresden Files, NBC€™s John Constantine needed to be a good man, someone who worked hard to save lives: fundamentally a detective, on the side of order versus chaos. Because he€™s a chain-smoking misanthrope in a trenchcoat operating in a hardboiled milieu, Constantine has often been mistaken for some kind of paranormal PI - Sam Spade with a spellbook - but the truth is that Hellblazer was about someone on the other side of the fence, a hermetic hustler, a cursed con artist€ a sorcerous shark in a sea full of minnows. Against chaos? John Constantine personifies chaos.