The 15 Best TV Shows Based on Books

The best book adaptations understand that fidelity is a tool, not a goal. Game of Thrones leads because for six seasons it performed the hardest trick in television — compressing thousands of pages of Martin's plotting into propulsive drama — and its eventual stumble came precisely when the books ran out. Shōgun is the modern masterclass: it took Clavell's doorstop, shifted the perspective toward Mariko and Toranaga, and made subtitled patience a ratings hit. The Expanse adapted nine novels with its authors in the writers' room, which shows. Special respect goes to the category-breakers: The Leftovers exhausted its source novel in one season and then surpassed it, while The Queen's Gambit and Normal People prove slim literary novels make better limited series than epics do. Comics and games sat this list out — novels and stories only, from Atwood to Liu Cixin to a self-published sci-fi serial that became Silo. Read the book, watch the show, then settle the argument with the matching book adaptations trivia quiz.