These days, it can feel like there are more TV shows based on books than there are TV shows not based on books. And maybe there’s a good reason for that. Based on recent history, at least, novels tend to translate into excellent television series. In fact, they’re so effective that books that have already been adapted into movies are now being readapted into TV series.
Some adaptations, such as Normal People, based on the novel by Sally Rooney, are single-season entities that don’t stray too far from the source material, while others take far more liberties. Then there are those like The Handmaid’s Tale, which stayed faithful to Margaret Atwood’s original text in the first season, but was so successful that it decided to continue the story in additional seasons, which went well beyond the scope of the novel. Atwood herself wrote a follow-up to the book published in 2019, The Testaments, which is now also being developed into a series.
Even shows like Game of Thrones, Outlander, and Bridgerton, which are based on book series that supply multiple seasons’s worth of storylines, have expanded into full-on cinematic universes through spin-off shows. Hopefully, the same will eventually be said for Heated Rivalry, a queer hockey romance adaptation that has already been picked up for a second season by HBO Max. After all, actor François Arnaud told Glamour he heard talks of a Scott Hunter-centric spinoff…
In the meantime, here are just 19 TV shows based on books that we think are definitely worth a stream.
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