Books can make good TV. Just ask ‘Game of Thrones’

Emilia Clarke in ”Game of Thrones.”

Posted by Wayne G. Barber

On Sunday, “Game of Thrones” ended season 6 on a strong note. The blockbuster HBO series is one of many examples of books getting adapted beautifully for TV. From “Brideshead Revisited” and “Roots” to “The Leftovers,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Outlander,” “True Blood,” and “Wolf Hall,” TV writers and producers have at times shown remarkable skill in translating words into visual storytelling.
There are a few very interesting book-to-TV projects in the works. One of the most promising is a miniseries adaptation of David Carr’s addiction memoir “The Night of the Gun” for AMC. The screenplay will be written by Shawn Ryan, who created “The Shield,” and Bob Odenkirk wills star as Carr.
Starz is turning Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” into a series with an interesting cast, including Ian McShane, Cloris Leachman, Crispin Glover, and Gillian Anderson, who has been on a greatness streak with “The Fall,” “Hannibal,” and the return of “The X-Files.” Also in the cast: Boston native Jonathan Tucker.
Whitney Cummings is adapting Maureen Dowd’s “Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide” into an HBO comedy. Lucy Punch and Brett Goldstein will star, along with Cummings. Let’s all hope that, since it’s on HBO, it’s better than Cummings’s two other series, “Whitney” and — I cringe — “2 Broke Girls.”

TNT is making a series based on Caleb Carr’s serial killer novel “The Alienist,” which is set in 19th-century New York. The drama will be directed and produced by Cary Fukunaga, the guy who directed “Beasts of No Nation” and the first season of “True Detective”

Elisabeth Moss is going to star in a Hulu series based on Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Atwood will be involved in the project, as a consulting producer.
The HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” never made it to the air; maybe “Purity,” based on Franzen’s most recent novel, will fare better. The miniseries will be written and directed by Todd Field, of “Little Children” and “In the Bedroom,” and it will star Daniel Craig.
Source: Matthew Gilbert Globe staff
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