Every Philip K. Dick TV Adaptation Ranked Worst To Best

If you're a film fan then it's very likely that, even if you haven't read any of his many novels or short stories, you'll know the name Philip K. Dick.

Since his death in 1982, silver screen adaptations of the prolific author's work have been plentiful, resulting in a varied collection of feature films ranging from the bewildering (Radio Free Albemuth) to the sublime (Blade Runner).

Given that Dick's fiction features mind-bending themes covering perception, human nature and the intricacies of reality, the difficulty of creating a film that's actually watchable is perhaps an inevitable side effect of attempting to adapt some of these stories.

But what about television, a medium that can sometimes allow for more scope in style and format? There have been a few experiments over the years: some good, some bad and some simply lost to the annals of history.

So, does Philip K. Dick's material benefit more from the extended world and character building that episodic TV allows for? Are his stories better suited to an anthology format where each episode is its own self-enclosed story? And how does each adaptation compare?

Let's find out.

Dick's short story Impostor, first published in 1953, has been adapted on a few different occasions and is notably the only work adapted for the screen prior to the author's death in 1982. It concerns a man attempting to clear his name following accusations from colleagues that he's an android infiltrator.

The story was first adapted for television in 1962 as part of the well-received British science fiction anthology show Out of This World. Unfortunately, this version is lost to history, deleted immediately after broadcast as was common practice at the time.

Nearly 20 years later, Impostor, was again adapted for the small screen, this time as Impostore, an episode of the second season of Italian sci-fi anthology show Il Fascino Dell'insolito (The Charm of the Unusual). The entire episode is available on YouTube but with no English subtitles available, you'll need to brush up on your Italian.

Impostore suffers from poor direction, and a lack of dynamism, focus and urgency are apparent from the outset. The crumbling industrial backdrops, somewhat reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (the comparisons end there), are quite effective but overall it's not particularly memorable.

In 2001, a feature film adaptation starring Gary Sinise also struggled to tell the story in a compelling way, in part due to a run-time that the source material just can't support.

There's clearly an interesting story to be told here, albeit a familiar one, and perhaps a slickly produced television adaptation with a suitably short running time could be good. Impostore, unfortunately, is definitely not it.