Speaker 1: Imagine an acclaimed, award-winning author, right, just sitting down with
Speaker 1: a television executive.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it.
Speaker 1: And the executive slides a script across the table. But
Speaker 1: it's a script that takes the author's beloved, painstakingly crafted novel,
Speaker 1: and it just completely shatters the timeline. Oh, boy.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaker 1: Right. It aggressively mutates the emotional core. It elevates background
Speaker 1: characters to the main stage. Just totally revamps it. And
Speaker 1: the author reads it, looks up at the executive and says,
Speaker 1: I love it. Do it.
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, that sounds like a total Hollywood fairy tale. Honestly,
Speaker 2: we are so conditioned, you know, to expect authors to
Speaker 2: fiercely protect every single comma of their original work.
Speaker 1: We really are. Because usually when we talk about a
Speaker 1: book making the jump to the screen, we fall back
Speaker 1: on this universally accepted, almost sacred cultural rule.
Speaker 2: The golden rule of adaptations. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Exactly. You've said it. I've said it. Everyone listening has
Speaker 1: probably said it at a dinner party. The book is
Speaker 1: always better.
Speaker 2: It is treated like gravity at this point.
Speaker 1: It really is. The source material is this holy text,
Speaker 1: and the screen version is just, well, this inherently flawed
Speaker 1: compromise for people who don't have the patience to read.
Speaker 1: And look, let's be honest, that rule exists for a
Speaker 1: very good reason.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. I mean, when you look at the baseline
Speaker 2: examples of literary greatness— The rule is essentially titanium. You
Speaker 2: just can't break it.
Speaker 1: You're thinking of the heavy hitters, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean, take Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 2: The television show is a massive, sweeping, culturally dominant piece
Speaker 2: of media. It's huge.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: But if you actually sit down and read Atwood's novel,
Speaker 2: the prose just cuts so much deeper. It's practically surgical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the internal dread in that book is just unmatched.
Speaker 1: Or look at Flowers for Alternon.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a perfect example. Right.
Speaker 1: That story has been adapted in a dozen different ways
Speaker 1: across multiple decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the original short story still wins every single time.
Speaker 1: It's undefeated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And don't even get me started on Isaac Asimov's Foundation.
Speaker 1: Oh, I knew you were going to bring that up.
Speaker 2: I have to. If someone watched the Apple TV adaptation
Speaker 2: and thought, wow, this completely tops Asimov. I mean, I
Speaker 2: have to assume they haven't actually read Asimov.
Speaker 1: Fair point. Great books resist adaptation because they were perfectly
Speaker 1: engineered for the page. But then you step into this
Speaker 1: incredibly rare, highly fascinating territory where that resistance just, well, breaks.
Speaker 2: And that's the anomaly we're hunting today. It was last
Speaker 2: that rare alchemy where an adaptation doesn't just survive the transition.
Speaker 2: It actually thrives.
Speaker 1: It transcends the book.
Speaker 2: It really does. We like things to fit neatly into categories,
Speaker 2: you know, and the book is better category is a
Speaker 2: very warm, comforting blanket for readers.
Speaker 1: It makes us feel smart.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But occasionally a showrunner gets hold of a book
Speaker 2: and manages to do something the original author couldn't or
Speaker 2: perhaps just didn't think to do. And the result is
Speaker 2: undeniably stubbornly better.
Speaker 1: Which is wild to think about.
Speaker 2: It is. And that's what makes you want to go
Speaker 2: back to the original text afterward and dissect it page
Speaker 2: by page. You just want to figure out what on
Speaker 2: earth the TV writers did differently to make the screen
Speaker 2: version sing like that.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly the mission of today's Deep Dive.
Speaker 1: We're working off a fantastic piece of media analysis published
Speaker 1: in May 2026 on MovieWeb, written by Soni Hinduja.
Speaker 2: It's a great piece.
Speaker 1: Really great. It's titled Seven Sci-Fi TV Shows That Are
Speaker 1: Better Than the Books They're Based On. But I want
Speaker 1: to be super clear right up front. We are not
Speaker 1: here to just read off a list of seven shows.
Speaker 2: Right. You can just go pull up the article if
Speaker 2: you want a list.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Our goal is to deconstruct the mechanics. We want
Speaker 1: to know why and how these specific TV adaptations broke
Speaker 1: that cardinal rule.
Speaker 2: OK, let's unpack this, because to beat a great book,
Speaker 2: you have to fundamentally understand what makes it tick, right?
Speaker 1: You do. And we have to establish a baseline truth
Speaker 1: about the medium of television right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, an adaptation should never be a transcription.
Speaker 2: A transcription. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Well, if you just transcribe a book, like if you
Speaker 1: take a scene, perfectly replicate the dialogue, put the actors
Speaker 1: in the exact room described in the text, you usually
Speaker 1: end up with very rigid, lifeless television.
Speaker 2: It feels like a stage play being filmed by a
Speaker 2: security camera. That is a perfect way to put it.
Speaker 2: A true adaptation requires translating the beating heart of the
Speaker 2: story into an entirely new medium. And that new medium
Speaker 2: has completely different rules, vastly different pacing requirements, and, well,
Speaker 2: totally different tools.
Speaker 1: And I want everyone listening to think about your own
Speaker 1: favorite book-to-screen disappointments right now. Think about the movies that
Speaker 1: completely let you down.
Speaker 2: We all have at least one that still makes us angry.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. Hopefully, the framework we build today will give
Speaker 1: you a completely new perspective on why those fail and
Speaker 1: why these seven succeeded. So let's jump right into the
Speaker 1: deepest end of the pool, which is the problem of
Speaker 1: the human mind.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes. The internal monologue. Right.
Speaker 1: Novels, especially science fiction novels, live almost entirely inside a
Speaker 1: protagonist's head. As a reader, we get this incredible VIP
Speaker 1: access to their thoughts, their paranoias, their deductive reasoning, their memories.
Speaker 2: It's super intimate. It is.
Speaker 1: But you know what that intimate internal monologue makes for
Speaker 1: on television? Terrible, boring television. Watching a person stand silently
Speaker 1: in a futuristic room while a voiceover plays is just
Speaker 1: not compelling visual storytelling.
Speaker 2: It's the definition of a cinematic dead end. Television demands
Speaker 2: action and interaction. I mean, it is inherently external. You
Speaker 2: simply cannot film a thought.
Speaker 1: Right. And the first show on our radar highlights this
Speaker 1: hurdle perfectly. The first season of Altered Carbon. Let's set
Speaker 1: the table with the source material here.
Speaker 2: It's a dense one.
Speaker 1: Very dense. Richard K. Morgan dropped this incredible debut novel
Speaker 1: back in 2002. It is a wildly dense, unapologetically hard-boiled
Speaker 1: noir story. But it's transplanted into this crazy transhuman future.
Speaker 2: We should probably define what that looks like for anyone
Speaker 2: who hasn't read it. A transhuman future in Morgan's universe
Speaker 2: means a reality where human consciousness can be completely digitized. Right.
Speaker 1: It's all data.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's stored on this little device in your spine
Speaker 2: called a cortical stack. Because your mind is just data,
Speaker 2: human bodies have become entirely disposable. They're literally called sleeves.
Speaker 1: Which is such a cool concept. Death is practically obsolete,
Speaker 1: providing you have the money to buy a new sleeve.
Speaker 2: It's an immaculate concept. The mystery is top tier. The
Speaker 2: world building is legendary. And the protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is
Speaker 2: widely considered one of the most compelling characters in modern sci-fi.
Speaker 1: The author of our source material even mentions she's read
Speaker 1: the book twice just to absorb all the dense ideas
Speaker 1: about class disparity and digital consciousness.
Speaker 2: It's that kind of book. You have to reread it.
Speaker 1: But here is the massive roadblock for TV executive Morgan's
Speaker 1: book works brilliantly on the page. specifically because it is
Speaker 1: driven by Kovacs' internal monologue. We are trapped in his head.
Speaker 2: Right. We experience this terrifying, cynical future entirely through his
Speaker 2: highly observant internal narration.
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to that cinematic dead end you mentioned.
Speaker 1: If you try to film Altered Carbon with strict loyalty
Speaker 1: to the book, you just have an actor, Joel Kinman,
Speaker 1: in the Netflix adaptation, just staring moodily out of a
Speaker 1: neon-lit window for 45 minutes.
Speaker 2: Just brooding in silence. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Exactly. While his disembodied voice explains the plot to the audience,
Speaker 1: it's entirely passive. So the 2018 Netflix adaptation had to
Speaker 1: find a fix. They had to externalize the internal.
Speaker 2: So how do you even do that without ruining the
Speaker 2: noir vibe? Because noir relies heavily on that lonely, isolated feeling.
Speaker 1: You pull the camera back. If Kovacs can't just stand
Speaker 1: there and think his thoughts, he needs people to talk to.
Speaker 1: He needs a sounding board. So his internal deductions, his trauma,
Speaker 1: and his cynicism become external dialogues and physical conflicts.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay. So the writers of the show achieve this
Speaker 2: by vastly expanding the supporting cast. They gave these background
Speaker 2: players real room to breathe. Right.
Speaker 1: They exist as fully realized people now. They aren't just
Speaker 1: cardboard cutouts for Kovacs to observe and judge in his head.
Speaker 2: And the most stunning example of this has to be Raylene.
Speaker 2: In Morgan's novel, Raylene is practically a footnote. I mean,
Speaker 2: she's a blip on their radar.
Speaker 1: Barely registers.
Speaker 2: But in the television show, played by Dishon Lachman... She
Speaker 2: becomes season one's most layered, complex, and arguably most important character.
Speaker 1: By pulling her out of the background and elevating her
Speaker 1: into this massive, deeply personal antagonist, the showrunners gave Kovacs
Speaker 1: a conflict that forces him to voice his internal struggles
Speaker 1: out loud.
Speaker 2: It's a masterclass in adaptation geometry, really. You're shifting a
Speaker 2: single point into a three-dimensional plane. But to successfully pull
Speaker 2: the camera back, you also need something visually compelling for
Speaker 2: the camera to look at.
Speaker 1: You can't just have Kovacs and Riley and talking in
Speaker 1: a sterile gray room.
Speaker 2: No, you can't. And this is where the adaptation truly
Speaker 2: flexed its muscles. The production reportedly spent an estimated six
Speaker 2: to seven million dollars per episode.
Speaker 1: OK, wait, I have to jump in here. Six to
Speaker 1: seven million dollars per episode in 2018 is a staggering
Speaker 1: amount of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But does throwing money at a screen actually make a
Speaker 1: story better?
Speaker 2: That's a fair question.
Speaker 1: Because we have all seen wildly expensive, terrible science fiction.
Speaker 1: It feels like sometimes a massive budget just makes a
Speaker 1: bad script shinier, you know?
Speaker 2: That is a very fair skepticism. Money alone does not
Speaker 2: equal narrative quality. But in the case of Altered Carbon's
Speaker 2: first season, that budget wasn't just used for explosions. It
Speaker 2: was used as a narrative translation tool.
Speaker 1: Okay, a translation tool. Unpack that.
Speaker 2: They used that capital to physically, tangibly render Bay City.
Speaker 2: Every dollar is visible in the rain-slicked streets, the claustrophobic
Speaker 2: neon lighting, the holographic advertisements. That financial commitment allowed them
Speaker 2: to create a suffocating, immersive noir atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It actively replaces Morganist prose.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see what you're saying. The visuals are doing
Speaker 2: the heavy lifting that the adjectives used to do.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Well, to put it more precisely, they externalize the world-building.
Speaker 1: Think about the visuals of the stacked bodies in the
Speaker 1: storage facilities. Or the eccentric AI that runs the hotel
Speaker 1: Kovacs stays in. Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaker 2: Oh, Poe is such a great character.
Speaker 1: Right. These aren't just expensive background props. They are visual
Speaker 1: translations of the book's core themes about disposable humanity and
Speaker 1: artificial consciousness. The viewer feels the weight of this dystopian
Speaker 1: world instinctively rather than having a narrator just tell them
Speaker 1: it's depressing. It perfectly captures that hard-boiled essence. but makes
Speaker 1: it a shared visceral experience rather than a lonely reading one.
Speaker 2: It's a huge achievement.
Speaker 1: It is. Now, before we move on, I have to
Speaker 1: make a quick aside. Our source material adds a very strict,
Speaker 1: very humorous caveat about altered carbon.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know what's coming.
Speaker 1: All of this high praise we're throwing around. It is
Speaker 1: strictly reserved for season one. The article literally says season
Speaker 1: two is a different conversation. We don't talk about season two.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious and accurate.
Speaker 1: So, for your own sake, if you are listening to
Speaker 1: this and haven't watched it, just pretend the show was
Speaker 1: a brilliantly executed, one-and-done, limited series.
Speaker 2: A very wise approach. But, you know, this concept of
Speaker 2: having to fix a protagonist leads us into a slightly different,
Speaker 2: arguably much more frustrating problem.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: What happens when your main character isn't just stuck in
Speaker 2: his own head, but is actually deeply, explicitly annoying? Let's
Speaker 2: look at The Expanse.
Speaker 1: Oh, man. The Expanse. This is based on the book
Speaker 1: series by James S. A.
Speaker 2: Corey.
Speaker 1: And here is a fantastic bit of sci-fi pedigree for you.
Speaker 1: The first novel, Leviathan Wakes, carries an enthusiastic blurb from
Speaker 1: George R.R. Martin.
Speaker 2: Which is high praise.
Speaker 1: Huge praise. And it makes total sense when you learn
Speaker 1: that one half of the James S.A. Corey pen named
Speaker 1: Doe Franck was actually Martin's former assistant. So the world
Speaker 1: building is stellar. It's meaty. It's highly imaginative.
Speaker 2: The politics between Earth, Mars, and the Belters are incredibly nuanced.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. But there is a massive roadblock sitting right
Speaker 1: in the captain's chair of the narrative.
Speaker 2: And his name is James Holden.
Speaker 1: Holden is a problem. The glaring issue with Holden in
Speaker 1: the books is that he never, ever shuts up about
Speaker 1: being right. He is described in the piece as insufferably self-righteous.
Speaker 2: He really is. He possesses this messianic certainty about his
Speaker 2: own moral compass. Every time the crew faces a complex
Speaker 2: gray area survival decision, Holden is there to deliver a
Speaker 2: lecture on absolute ethics.
Speaker 1: He's the kind of hero who, frankly, makes you check
Speaker 1: how many pages are left in the chapter. He just
Speaker 1: drags the pacing down with his constant moralizing.
Speaker 2: And a self-righteous protagonist is something a reader can somewhat
Speaker 2: tolerate in a novel. If Holden goes on a three-page
Speaker 2: internal rant about the ethics of space piracy, you can
Speaker 2: skim it. You can push through to get to the
Speaker 2: space battles. Right.
Speaker 1: You control the pace of reading.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But on television, you are trapped in real time
Speaker 2: with this person. You can't skim a performance. If the
Speaker 2: viewer finds the central hero annoying, uncompromising, and unwatchable, they
Speaker 2: will simply change the channel.
Speaker 1: So the adaptation, which started on CeFi and later found
Speaker 1: a home on Amazon, had to execute a major character intervention.
Speaker 1: Did they just rewrite him to be a completely different person?
Speaker 2: No. And that's the brilliance of the fix. They didn't
Speaker 2: betray who Holden fundamentally was. He is still the moral center.
Speaker 2: But they carefully muted his most aggravating qualities.
Speaker 1: They filed down the rough edges. Right.
Speaker 2: And more importantly, they shifted the moral weight of the narrative.
Speaker 1: They took the burden off his shoulders. They realized they
Speaker 1: couldn't just have one chosen one hero carrying the entire
Speaker 1: ethical burden of the solar system.
Speaker 2: So they shifted that weight onto the ensemble. They let
Speaker 2: other characters step up, aggressively challenge him, share the load,
Speaker 2: and provide fiercely different perspectives.
Speaker 1: Holden isn't allowed to just give a lecture and have
Speaker 1: everyone nod in agreement anymore.
Speaker 2: Not at all. Characters like Amos with his brutally pragmatic
Speaker 2: survival instincts or Avasarala with her Machiavellian political maneuvering. They
Speaker 2: constantly check his privilege and his idealism.
Speaker 1: Avasarala is just incredible in the show.
Speaker 2: She is. But the real anchor here is Naomi Nagata.
Speaker 1: Dominique Tipperay's portrayal of Naomi gets so much praise. The
Speaker 1: piece specifically highlights her emotional versatility.
Speaker 2: That phrase is vital. In a scene where Holden's self-righteousness
Speaker 2: might have completely derailed the story, say, When deciding whether
Speaker 2: to share highly classified, dangerous information with the entire solar system,
Speaker 2: Naomi's emotional versatility grounds the conflict. Right.
Speaker 1: She brings a lived-in trauma from the belt that directly
Speaker 1: contradicts Holden's privileged Earth upbringing. By relying on this ensemble friction,
Speaker 1: the TV version created something significantly more watchable. It balanced
Speaker 1: the moral scales. You know, here you describe how they
Speaker 1: had to balance the scales by bringing in Amos and
Speaker 1: Naomi and Avasarala.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, well, it's like taking a really intimate
Speaker 1: solo acoustic song. Okay.
Speaker 2: I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Like just one guy with a guitar singing his heart
Speaker 1: out and trying to force a 50-piece symphony to play it.
Speaker 1: You can't just have the entire orchestra play the exact
Speaker 1: same notes as the guitar, just Louder. That would sound awful.
Speaker 2: It would just be a wall of overwhelming noise. That
Speaker 2: is an incredibly apt way to look at it.
Speaker 1: To pick at work, you have to break the song apart. Right.
Speaker 1: You have to give the strings a counter melody. You
Speaker 1: let the brass section carry the bass line. You give
Speaker 1: the percussion the rhythm.
Speaker 2: Everyone gets a part.
Speaker 1: Exactly. You're playing the same fundamental song, but you're expanding
Speaker 1: the arrangement so everyone has something meaningful to do. That's
Speaker 1: what pulling the camera back in Altered Carbon did for Kovacs.
Speaker 1: And that's what expanding the ensemble in The Expanse achieved
Speaker 1: for Holden.
Speaker 2: And harmonizing that narrative had a massive real-world impact. I mean,
Speaker 2: the television show spawned a fandom so fervent, so deeply
Speaker 2: attached to this specific ensemble dynamic, that when CeFi canceled
Speaker 2: the series after its third season, the fans practically revolted.
Speaker 1: They flew a plane with a Save the Expanse banner
Speaker 1: over Amazon Studios. It made mainstream news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that level of coordinated dedication simply does not happen
Speaker 2: if the audience is stuck spending an hour a week
Speaker 2: with an insufferable, preachy protagonist. It only happened because the
Speaker 2: showrunners understood how to rebalance the architecture of the characters.
Speaker 1: But meeting a protagonist, annoying traits, or expanding a supporting
Speaker 1: cast is only one type of architectural fix. What happens
Speaker 1: when the flaw isn't the character, but the very DNA
Speaker 1: of how the original book was written and structured?
Speaker 2: Ah, moving on to the story engine itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Let's dig into Silo.
Speaker 2: This is a fascinating case study in narrative architecture. Silo
Speaker 2: is based on the Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey. And
Speaker 2: to understand the flaws of the book, you really have
Speaker 2: to understand how it was born.
Speaker 1: It has a very unique origin story, right?
Speaker 2: Very. Howey originally published the story online in serialized chunks.
Speaker 2: It started as a standalone short story. It exploded in popularity.
Speaker 2: And he just kept writing and releasing, writing and releasing.
Speaker 1: He didn't sit down on day one with a master
Speaker 1: plan for a massive, cohesive trilogy. which is such a cool, organic,
Speaker 1: grassroots way to build a world.
Speaker 2: It is cool, but I have to imagine that writing
Speaker 2: by the seat of your pants in a serialized format
Speaker 2: creates some serious structural baggage.
Speaker 1: It creates enormous architectural weaknesses. When you write without a
Speaker 1: master outline, you are effectively laying track right in front
Speaker 1: of a moving train.
Speaker 2: That sounds incredibly stressful.
Speaker 1: It is. And this inevitably leads to rushed reveals because
Speaker 1: you suddenly need a cliffhanger for the next chunk. It
Speaker 1: leads to introducing vital core characters that way too late
Speaker 1: in the overarching narrative simply because you only just invented
Speaker 1: them in Chapter 40.
Speaker 2: And you often present antagonists in ways that lack long-term
Speaker 2: setup or nuance because you didn't know they were the
Speaker 2: big bad in Chapter 1.
Speaker 1: But the concept itself is just absolute dynamite. The premise
Speaker 1: is thousands of people living in this massive 144-level underground
Speaker 1: silo for generations.
Speaker 2: And none of them know why they are there.
Speaker 1: Exactly. None of them know what destroyed the outside world,
Speaker 1: and none of them know why it's a lethal crime
Speaker 1: to ask to leave. The truth is buried somewhere deep
Speaker 1: in the mechanical infrastructure of their own society. It is
Speaker 1: the ultimate sci-fi puzzle box.
Speaker 2: So the challenge for Graham Yost, who developed the Apple
Speaker 2: TV adaptation that premiered in 2023, was immense. Yost has
Speaker 2: an incredible pedigree. He asked the talent behind critically acclaimed,
Speaker 2: tightly woven shows like Justified and The Americans.
Speaker 1: So he knows how to build the season of television.
Speaker 2: He absolutely does. He looked at the rush, disjointed pacing
Speaker 2: of how he's serialized books. and decided to apply the
Speaker 2: ultimate television virtue, which is patience.
Speaker 1: Yes. If you watch the show, it is incredibly patient.
Speaker 1: Almost defiantly so. Instead of racing ahead to dump lore
Speaker 1: on the audience or rush to the next crazy plot twist,
Speaker 1: the series slams on the brakes and prioritizes the people
Speaker 1: living inside those concrete walls.
Speaker 2: And that patience requires exceptional casting to hold the audience's attention.
Speaker 2: Rebecca Ferguson plays the protagonist, Juliet.
Speaker 1: She is so good in this.
Speaker 2: The analysis points out that while the book sketches Juliet
Speaker 2: out reasonably well as a determined mechanic, it never fully
Speaker 2: inhabits her trauma. Ferguson brings this coiled emotional precision to
Speaker 2: the role that elevates the entire series.
Speaker 1: Season one works brilliantly because of her grounded performance.
Speaker 2: But Yost didn't just rely on Ferguson's talent. He structurally
Speaker 2: rebuilt the character dynamics around her to fix the pacing.
Speaker 1: Which leads to what might be my favorite structural change
Speaker 1: mentioned in the piece, the character of Walker.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is such a smart change.
Speaker 1: In the books, Walker is an older male mechanic who
Speaker 1: helps Juliet. He's his fine. He serves his purpose. But
Speaker 1: for the show, Yost gender swapped the role, casting the
Speaker 1: phenomenal Harriet Walter.
Speaker 2: I want to push on this for a second. Because
Speaker 2: a cynic might look at that and say, oh, they
Speaker 2: just gender swapped a character for modern diversity points. Why
Speaker 2: does making Walker a woman actually fix the architecture of
Speaker 2: the story?
Speaker 1: Because it provides a maternal anchor in a world utterly
Speaker 1: devoid of trust. Think about the psychology of the silo.
Speaker 1: It's a bleak subterranean puzzle box where everyone is paranoid.
Speaker 2: Right. Neighbors report on neighbors. The truth is absolutely. actively
Speaker 2: suppressed by an authoritarian regime.
Speaker 1: Juliet is a fiercely independent, deeply traumatized woman whose own
Speaker 1: mother died tragically.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By making Walker an older woman who hasn't left her
Speaker 1: workshop in decades, they gave Juliet a surrogate mother.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow. It roots her.
Speaker 1: It changes the entire spine of the show. It gives
Speaker 1: Juliet a vulnerability and a reason to fight that goes
Speaker 1: way beyond mere curiosity about the silo's computer servers or
Speaker 1: hidden lore.
Speaker 2: It roots the high-concept sci-fi mystery in a very human,
Speaker 2: very recognizable familial bond. When Juliet takes risks, we aren't
Speaker 2: just worried about her solving the mystery, we are terrified
Speaker 2: of how her death will destroy Walker.
Speaker 1: It creates emotional stakes that a serialized plot twist simply
Speaker 1: cannot manufacture. And it clearly worked. Season 3 is officially
Speaker 1: slated for July of 2026, and the puzzle box is
Speaker 1: tighter and more compelling than ever.
Speaker 2: They understood that emotional pacing is just as important as
Speaker 2: the sci-fi concept. But let's flip the script for a second.
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Well, what happens when the structure of a book isn't
Speaker 2: flawed by a messy, serialized creation process? What if the
Speaker 2: structure is actually highly intentional, beautifully written, and beloved by critics?
Speaker 2: yet still needs to be completely dismantled for television.
Speaker 1: Oh, that brings us to Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven.
Speaker 2: This is a profoundly interesting case. Mandel's 2014 novel is
Speaker 2: not a flawed piece of work needing rescue. It is
Speaker 2: universally beloved.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful book. It's a lyrical, deeply melancholy look
Speaker 1: at art surviving the end of the world. It follows
Speaker 1: a traveling symphony that performs Shakespeare to tiny settlements of
Speaker 1: survivors after a devastating pandemic.
Speaker 2: And crucially, Mandel wrote this book with what our source
Speaker 2: perfectly describes as a serene detachment.
Speaker 1: Serene detachment. I mean, that sounds beautiful to read on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon with a cup of tea. It sounds
Speaker 1: poetic and reflective.
Speaker 2: It does sound lovely for a novel.
Speaker 1: But if I'm a television executive trying to hold on
Speaker 1: to viewers at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night, hearing
Speaker 1: the phrase serene detachment applied to my multi-million dollar post-apocalyptic
Speaker 1: show probably makes my blood run cold.
Speaker 2: Because serene detachment on television often translates to boring. It
Speaker 2: lacks a pulse. A novel can float above the timeline,
Speaker 2: observing the end of the world like a quiet historian.
Speaker 1: But television requires momentum.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The showrunner for the HBO Max adaptation, Patrick Somerville,
Speaker 2: recognized this inherent conflict between the book's beautiful, quiet tone
Speaker 2: and the medium's absolute need for kinetic energy. So he
Speaker 2: proposed a radical structural rebellion.
Speaker 1: He didn't just tweak it. He fundamentally altered the timeline.
Speaker 1: He made the narrative nonlinear to manufacture a sense of
Speaker 1: ongoing urgency, flashing back and forth between the collapse of
Speaker 1: society and the future.
Speaker 2: And even more radically, he grounded the entire overarching story
Speaker 2: in the central relationship between two characters, Kirsten, a young girl,
Speaker 2: and Jeevan, a man who ends up taking care of
Speaker 2: her when the world ends.
Speaker 1: What's fascinating is that he took a story that moved
Speaker 1: through time with a gentle, detached observation... And he injected
Speaker 1: it with absolute emotional chaos.
Speaker 2: He really did. He expanded this relationship between Kirsten and Jeevan,
Speaker 2: which is much more fleeting in the book, to serve
Speaker 2: as the beating, bleeding heart of the adaptation.
Speaker 1: And the most incredible part of this structural rebellion. Emily St.
Speaker 1: John Mandel, the author of the beloved book, actually endorsed
Speaker 1: this change. When Somerville proposed totally rewriting the emotional core
Speaker 1: of her novel, she told him she loved it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have to stop you there. I really want
Speaker 2: to challenge this idea.
Speaker 1: Go for it.
Speaker 2: I find it wild that the author gave her blessing
Speaker 2: to dismantle her own serene detachment. But taking a step back,
Speaker 2: if a showrunner comes in and completely changes the emotional
Speaker 2: core of a story shifting from quiet observation to emotional chaos,
Speaker 2: and they totally rearrange the timeline.
Speaker 1: And they elevate a specific fleeting character dynamic to be
Speaker 1: the entire focal point of the series.
Speaker 2: Right. At what point does it stop being an adaptation
Speaker 2: at all? Even if the original author gives a thumbs up,
Speaker 2: aren't we just looking at incredibly high budget, professionally produced
Speaker 2: fan fiction? Is this whole concept of loyalty to the
Speaker 2: text actually a trap?
Speaker 1: That is the central tension of adapting any beloved work.
Speaker 1: And it's a brilliant question. You have to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: are you adapting the events of the book? Or are
Speaker 1: you adapting the soul of the book?
Speaker 2: The soul versus the events?
Speaker 1: Yes. A rigid loyalty to the sequence of events is
Speaker 1: absolutely a trap. If Somerville had remained fiercely loyal to
Speaker 1: the serene detachment of the novel, the television show might
Speaker 1: have been a beautiful but utterly sterile museum exhibit. People
Speaker 1: would have admired the cinematography and fallen asleep.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: By acting like, as you provocatively called it, a high-budget
Speaker 1: fan fiction writer, he identified the thematic resonance of the story.
Speaker 1: which is about the agonizing beauty of human connection after
Speaker 1: immense loss, and he amplified it using the tools of television. Urgency,
Speaker 1: nonlinear reveals, and intense, messy character focus.
Speaker 2: I really like that distinction. Adapting the soul, not the skeleton.
Speaker 2: And it's also worth noting that this show had a
Speaker 2: bizarre external factor.
Speaker 1: Oh, right, the timing of the filming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was filmed adjacent to a real-world pandemic. Sonia
Speaker 2: Hinduja points out in her piece that this infused the
Speaker 2: production with an eerie predestined authenticity. The actors didn't have
Speaker 2: to imagine the existential dread of a world shutting down.
Speaker 2: They were living it between takes.
Speaker 1: You can't manufacture that kind of energy.
Speaker 2: You really can't. But your point about adapting the soul
Speaker 2: versus the skeleton is the perfect bridge to our next
Speaker 2: set of shows. Because we've talked about tweaking pacing and
Speaker 2: we've talked about shifting character focus.
Speaker 1: Now, we escalate to the most extreme form of adaptation.
Speaker 1: This is where a showrunner takes the original premise... literally
Speaker 1: burns the skeleton to the ground and builds a completely different,
Speaker 1: wildly ambitious empire on the Ashen.
Speaker 2: Yes. This is where adaptation borders on complete hostile reinvention.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about The 100. I'm fascinated by this one.
Speaker 1: Me too. The source material is a book series by
Speaker 1: Cass Morgan. The premise is undeniably brilliant. Humanity has been
Speaker 1: living on a failing space station for generations after a
Speaker 1: nuclear war.
Speaker 2: Running out of air, so they have to make a
Speaker 2: desperate choice. Right.
Speaker 1: They take a hundred juvenile delinquents, teenage criminals, and drop
Speaker 1: them down to a radioactive earth to see if the
Speaker 1: planet is survivable again. It is a phenomenal hook.
Speaker 2: But the piece is brutally honest about the execution in
Speaker 2: the books. It essentially says the source material buries this
Speaker 2: incredible sci-fi concept under suffocating layers of teenage love triangles
Speaker 2: and angst. It explicitly calls the book a fine beach read.
Speaker 1: And a fine beach read about who is taking who
Speaker 1: to the post-apocalyptic prom is rarely the foundation for a
Speaker 1: groundbreaking piece of television.
Speaker 2: No, it is not.
Speaker 1: Jason Rothenberg, the showrunner for the CW adaptation, clearly recognized
Speaker 1: that the underlying premise was vastly superior to the execution
Speaker 1: on the page. So he made a ruthless, incredibly bold,
Speaker 1: creative decision.
Speaker 2: He took that basic skeletal premise delinquent sent to a
Speaker 2: ruined earth and practically discarded the rest of the source material.
Speaker 2: The show burned through the plot of the entire four-book
Speaker 2: series in roughly one season. Wait.
Speaker 1: Four books of plot, consumed in a single season of television.
Speaker 1: That pace is staggering.
Speaker 2: It's breakneck. But once they exhausted the books, the writers
Speaker 2: were completely unburdened by loyalty. They cut loose. The article
Speaker 2: highlights that they adopted an unofficial motto in the early seasons,
Speaker 2: whatever the hell we want.
Speaker 1: That is hilarious.
Speaker 2: That phrase became both the philosophy of the desperate teenagers
Speaker 2: trying to survive on the ground and the literal creative
Speaker 2: manifesto of the writer's room.
Speaker 1: And what they built with that freedom is wild. They
Speaker 1: fearlessly expanded the universe. They introduced the grounders, the brutal
Speaker 1: tribal survivors who had evolved on Earth.
Speaker 2: They brought in the Mountain Men, this creepy, highly sophisticated
Speaker 2: faction hiding in an underground bunker.
Speaker 1: But why did that work so well? Why did throwing
Speaker 1: out the teen angst for Mountain Men elevate the show?
Speaker 2: Because it fundamentally shifted the genre from a YA romance
Speaker 2: to a geopolitical survival thriller. By introducing the Mountain Men
Speaker 2: as an impossibly sophisticated bunker-dwelling society... the writers instantly created
Speaker 2: a sharp contrast to the feral, violent survivalism of the grounders.
Speaker 1: It forced the teenage protagonist out of their high school
Speaker 1: drama and forced them to navigate complex adult treaties, mutually
Speaker 1: assured destruction, and impossible moral compromises.
Speaker 2: They took a beach read and turned it into a massive,
Speaker 2: brutal examination of what human beings will do to survive.
Speaker 1: It's so reckless, but so brilliant. When I think about
Speaker 1: The 100 adopting the motto, whatever the hell we want.
Speaker 1: It brings back that analogy we were touching on earlier.
Speaker 2: Your race car analogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like taking the keys to a highly tuned,
Speaker 1: multimillion-dollar Formula One race car and handing them to a chaotic,
Speaker 1: unpredictable teenager. By all logical metrics, it should be a
Speaker 1: total disaster. They should crash it into the wall in
Speaker 1: the first turn.
Speaker 2: But against all odds, they drive with this reckless, fearless instinct,
Speaker 2: and they actually end up winning the championship. It highlights
Speaker 2: the sheer joy of creative fearlessness over rigid obedience to
Speaker 2: a book.
Speaker 1: That reckless instinct is exactly what drives our next show,
Speaker 1: though in a much more melancholy, prestigious register. Let's examine
Speaker 1: The Leftovers.
Speaker 2: Ah, The Leftovers. Based on Tom Parada's 2011 novel. Now,
Speaker 2: Parada's book has one of the most arresting premises in
Speaker 2: recent memory. Out of nowhere, on a random Tuesday, 2%
Speaker 2: of the global population simply vanishes.
Speaker 1: Just Poof, gone.
Speaker 2: Gone. It's not a biblical rapture. Good people and bad
Speaker 2: people disappear equally. It's not a sci-fi disaster with alien lasers.
Speaker 2: There is zero explanation. And the book explores this through
Speaker 2: a very grounded emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1: It focuses on a quiet suburban portrait of a police
Speaker 1: chief and his family trying to cope in Mapleton, New York.
Speaker 2: It also introduces the guilty remnant, which is arguably one
Speaker 2: of the most unsettling inventions ever put onto a page.
Speaker 2: They are a cult that dresses entirely in white, takes
Speaker 2: a vow of silence, and chain smokes continuously.
Speaker 1: They exist purely as a living, breathing reminder to everyone
Speaker 1: else that the world has essentially already ended, and it's
Speaker 1: foolish to try and move on. The book covers a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of emotional ground. It's a great book.
Speaker 2: But then Damon Lindelof steps in as the showrunner for
Speaker 2: the HBO adaptation. Lindelof, who was famous for his work
Speaker 2: on Lost, took this grounded suburban premise and began to
Speaker 2: warp it.
Speaker 1: By the time the show reached seasons two and three,
Speaker 1: the television series had become entirely original. It completely outpaced
Speaker 1: the book's narrative.
Speaker 2: He went entirely off the map. Now, if you're a
Speaker 2: purist listening to this who deeply loved Tom Parada's book,
Speaker 2: Hearing that a showrunner just threw the plot out the
Speaker 2: window probably makes your blood boil.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2: But here is why it was the most respectful thing
Speaker 2: Lindelof could have done for that premise. The trauma of
Speaker 2: a global, unexplained, vanishing event couldn't just remain a quiet
Speaker 2: suburban depress for three seasons.
Speaker 1: Eventually, that grief has to metastasize.
Speaker 2: It has to become existential, surreal, and mythic. Lindelof realized
Speaker 2: the show needed to explore faith, madness, and reality itself
Speaker 2: breaking down.
Speaker 1: He moves the entire cast to Texas. He introduces a
Speaker 1: town that had zero departures. He brings in these wild,
Speaker 1: reality-bending storylines involving alternate purgatories and international conspiracies.
Speaker 2: But if the show gets that weird, how does it
Speaker 2: not just become a messy, incomprehensible fever dream?
Speaker 1: Because of the anchor. The key to grounding this wild
Speaker 1: expansion was the elevation of Nora Durst, played by Carrie Coon.
Speaker 1: In Parada's original novel, Nora has a relatively modest role.
Speaker 2: She's a grieving mother who lost her husband and two
Speaker 2: children in the departure. She's important, but she isn't the
Speaker 2: center of gravity.
Speaker 1: In the television show, Lindelof elevates her to become the
Speaker 1: absolute emotional fulcrum of the entire series. Sonia Hinduja raves
Speaker 1: about Carrie Coon's performance in the piece, calling it controlled
Speaker 1: and devastating.
Speaker 2: She actually says it still doesn't get mentioned enough in
Speaker 2: conversations about the greatest television acting of all time.
Speaker 1: It is a powerhouse performance that demands your attention. And
Speaker 1: it is the specific mechanism that allows Lindelof to get
Speaker 1: away with the surrealism. Because no matter how strange the
Speaker 1: plot gets, even if characters are seemingly traveling to the afterlife,
Speaker 1: Carrie Coon's grief is terrifyingly, unmistakably real.
Speaker 2: You believe in the crazy world because you believe in
Speaker 2: her pain. Now, there is a tragic irony to all
Speaker 2: of this. Despite being arguably the most profound sci-fi adaptation
Speaker 2: of its era and holding up better than almost any
Speaker 2: other 2010 sci-fi show, The Leftovers was never a massive
Speaker 2: ratings hit.
Speaker 1: Which is a tragedy, but it cements its status as
Speaker 1: a fearless, critical masterpiece. And speaking of masterpieces, this brings
Speaker 1: us to our final hurdle.
Speaker 2: The big one.
Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to say a TV show can
Speaker 1: improve upon a flawed YA beach read like The 100
Speaker 1: or fix the pacing of a serialized experiment like Silo.
Speaker 1: But what happens when the source material is a literal masterpiece?
Speaker 1: undeniable literary giant.
Speaker 2: Can television still claim to do it better when the
Speaker 2: book is already in the pantheon of greats?
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate test. And for this, we look at
Speaker 1: Philip K. Diss' 1962 novel, The Man in the High Castle.
Speaker 2: This book is a titan of speculative fiction. For those
Speaker 2: who aren't familiar, it won the Hugo Award, which is
Speaker 2: essentially the Academy Award for science fiction literature.
Speaker 1: It asks brilliant, deeply unsettling questions about the nature of reality,
Speaker 1: the mechanics of fascism, and the fragility of historical truth.
Speaker 1: It is an alternate history masterpiece where the Axis powers
Speaker 1: won World War II.
Speaker 2: America is divided. The Nazis occupy the East Coast, the
Speaker 2: Japanese occupy the West Coast, and there's a neutral zone
Speaker 2: in the middle. But as brilliant as it is, there
Speaker 2: is a massive catch when it comes to actually reading
Speaker 2: it as a narrative story.
Speaker 1: What's the catch?
Speaker 2: The catch is that Philip K. Dick was essentially writing
Speaker 2: a philosophical mood piece, merely dressing it up in the
Speaker 2: clothes of a thriller. Dick was vastly more interested in
Speaker 2: the philosophical implications of the I Ching and the concept
Speaker 2: of multiple realities than he was in conventional plot mechanics.
Speaker 1: As a result, the plot of the novel just meanders,
Speaker 1: it drifts. And the characters. They aren't deeply fleshed out
Speaker 1: human beings whose survival you actively root for. They are
Speaker 1: intentionally thin vessels designed purely to deliver Dick's complex philosophical lectures.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the Amazon Prime video adaptation. Imagine
Speaker 2: being a writer in that room. You have to take
Speaker 2: this brilliant, meandering, philosophical mood piece and somehow force it
Speaker 2: into the rigid, demanding structure of a gripping, episodic TV thriller.
Speaker 1: They kept the chilling premise and they kept the mysterious
Speaker 1: existence of this alternate reality film that shows a world
Speaker 1: where the Allies actually won the war. But they had
Speaker 1: to build an entirely new human architecture inside that political machine.
Speaker 2: To truly understand the sheer difficulty of this task, we
Speaker 2: have to look at a quote highlighted in the piece
Speaker 2: from Ridley Scott, who produced the Amazon adaptation.
Speaker 1: Scott is no stranger to adapting Philip K. Dick, right?
Speaker 1: He directed Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But he famously described the process of adopting The
Speaker 2: Man in the High Castle as a literal nightmare. His
Speaker 2: exact quote is, there are about 19 stories in the
Speaker 2: first 20 pages.
Speaker 1: I can just picture the writer's room just staring at
Speaker 1: a whiteboard with 19 different philosophical tangents, branching off from
Speaker 1: chapter one, pulling their hair out, wondering how to make
Speaker 1: this make sense for a Tuesday night viewer.
Speaker 2: 19 stories in 20 pages is a screenwriter's sleep paralysis demon.
Speaker 2: How do you even begin to parse that out into
Speaker 2: a cohesive script?
Speaker 1: You do it by focusing ruthlessly on the human element.
Speaker 1: The television show succeeded, particularly in its genuinely gripping first
Speaker 1: two seasons, by taking Dick as oppressive, allegorical politics and
Speaker 1: making them feel viscerally, dangerously real.
Speaker 2: They didn't just have characters sit in a room and
Speaker 2: debate fascism. They showed the terrifying, banal reality of living
Speaker 2: under it.
Speaker 1: They put flesh and blood stakes inside the philosophy.
Speaker 2: Precisely. They expanded characters like Obergruppenführer John Smith, played terrifyingly
Speaker 2: well by Rufus Sewell. In the book, the Nazi menace
Speaker 2: is more of an overarching dread.
Speaker 1: But in the show, John Smith is a family man
Speaker 1: in the American suburbs who also happens to be a
Speaker 1: high-ranking Nazi orchestrating atrocities. By grounding the high-concept speculative fiction
Speaker 1: in character-driven drama, the show made the stakes personal, not
Speaker 1: just academic.
Speaker 2: You feel the fear of the resistance fighters because they're
Speaker 2: fully realized people, not just mouthpieces for the author.
Speaker 1: Okay, but this begs a huge question for me. If
Speaker 1: a literal titan of cinema like Ridley Scott goes on
Speaker 1: record describing the process of adapting a classic sci-fi book
Speaker 1: as a nightmare. Why does Hollywood keep doing this to itself?
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 1: Why do studios keep punching their writers and producers by
Speaker 1: forcing them to adapt these sprawling, seemingly unadaptable philosophical mood pieces?
Speaker 1: What is the allure of taking on a nightmare when
Speaker 1: you could just write an original script?
Speaker 2: The allure is the foundation. It is the sheer gravity-defying
Speaker 2: power of the premise. A truly great sci-fi premise, like
Speaker 2: a world where the Axis won the war, or a
Speaker 2: reality where consciousness can be downloaded into a new body,
Speaker 2: is incredibly rare.
Speaker 1: It is the hardest thing in the world to generate
Speaker 1: from scratch.
Speaker 2: Right. Hollywood endures the nightmare of adaptation because Philip K.
Speaker 2: Dick or Richard K. Morgan already did the genius level
Speaker 2: heavy lifting of inventing the world. The showrunners just have
Speaker 2: to do the blue collar structural work of building a
Speaker 2: sturdy narrative house on top of that genius foundation.
Speaker 1: When it works, the reward for taming an unadaptable masterpiece
Speaker 1: is a piece of television that carries deep intellectual weight
Speaker 1: and massive popular appeal. It is the holy grail of programming.
Speaker 2: The genius foundation. I love that.
Speaker 1: So let's pull all of this together and look at
Speaker 1: the big picture. We've looked at seven distinct sci-fi shows.
Speaker 1: We've seen adaptations that fixed annoying protagonists, like mutating Holden's
Speaker 1: self-righteousness in The Expanse by leaning on an ensemble.
Speaker 2: We've seen shows that rearranged messy, serialized structures, like Silo
Speaker 2: gender-swapping a character to create a maternal anchor. and the
Speaker 2: nonlinear emotional chaos of Station Eleven.
Speaker 1: We've seen shows that expanded a narrow canvas by externalizing
Speaker 1: the internal monologue, like pulling the camera back and spending
Speaker 1: millions to visually render Altered Carbon.
Speaker 2: And we've seen shows that outright burn their books to
Speaker 2: build something completely original, like the reckless joy of the
Speaker 2: 100 and the profound grief of the leftovers.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? It means the unspoken
Speaker 1: rule that we started this deep dive with, the idea
Speaker 1: that the book is always better, that the source text
Speaker 1: is an untouchable sacred relic, is fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 2: It's a myth.
Speaker 1: In fact, these seven shows prove that the very best
Speaker 1: adaptations are actually acts of loving betrayal. By refusing to
Speaker 1: just transcribe the text, television can actually realize the true
Speaker 1: potential of an author's premise better than the author themselves did.
Speaker 2: Loving Betrayal That perfectly encapsulates the process. And this brings
Speaker 2: us to a direct application for you, the listener. We
Speaker 2: promised to give you a new analytical framework, so here
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Give it to them.
Speaker 2: The next time you sit down to watch a movie
Speaker 2: or a television show based on a book you love,
Speaker 2: I want you to actively change the metric you use
Speaker 2: to judge it. Don't sit on your couch with a
Speaker 2: mental checklist asking, did they get the hair color right?
Speaker 2: Did they include my favorite line of dialogue from chapter four?
Speaker 1: Are they being faithful?
Speaker 2: Right. That is a trap. Instead, ask yourself, did this
Speaker 2: adaptation fix the book's blind spots? Did it take the
Speaker 2: internal and make it external? Did it give the premise
Speaker 2: the pacing and the human stakes it always deserved?
Speaker 1: If you evaluate adaptations on their ability to translate the
Speaker 1: soul rather than transcribe the skeleton, you will find a
Speaker 1: much richer viewing experience.
Speaker 2: I think that is an incredibly empowering way to consume media.
Speaker 2: It frees you from the tyranny of the source material.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be mad that they changed things.
Speaker 2: You can analyze why they change things.
Speaker 1: But it also leaves me with a final, slightly provocative thought,
Speaker 1: something for you to mull over on your own after
Speaker 1: we wrap up here today.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm curious.
Speaker 1: We've established that the secret to a masterpiece TV adaptation
Speaker 1: is the showrunner's willingness to drastically alter the fix, and
Speaker 1: sometimes completely dismantle the source material.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: If that is true, does that mean a 100% perfectly
Speaker 1: faithful adaptation, the exact kind of adaptation that purists are
Speaker 1: always begging for online, is actually doomed to fail by design?
Speaker 1: If a show changes absolutely nothing, does it guarantee that
Speaker 1: the book will always remain better? This is a fascinating
Speaker 1: paradox to consider. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this deep dive.
Speaker 2: It's been a blast.
Speaker 1: We've loved unpacking the secret alchemy of adaptation with you,
Speaker 1: and we invite you to keep questioning, keep analyzing, and
Speaker 1: keep exploring the mechanics of the stories you love every
Speaker 1: time you hit play.