Thanks to the gargantuan success of The Game of Thrones, TV producers seem to be scampering to adapt the next big book-to-TV, hoping that it too will have the same success as GoT. This is both good and bad news. Good because perhaps there just might be another great book-to-TV adaptation. Bad because there just might not. And there goes the book!

That said, today I saw that the book written by both Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Strain, is now also a TV Show. I’m a sucker for almost all vampire novels, movies and TV Shows – especially if the vampire is not some lovesick teenager (or pretending to be one) – and it’s Guillermo Del Toro!! The mind behind one of my favorite movies, Pan’s Labyrinth… of course I read the book. So it was even more delicious to find out that there is now a TV show based on the book. So off I went to find out if there are other books now adapted for TV. Here are some book to TV series adaptations you should watch:

The Strain

A plane lands in New York City but then all communication is cut and the plane sits dead on the tarmac. When Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team get on board to investigate they find a plane full of dead bodies with only four survivors. This is how The Strain begins. From here on the story slowly unfolds and we are introduced to the new threat to humanity. This is a vampire show – and no it’s not the romantic type of vampire either. It’s the fight to the death. The first episode was written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro and seems to have some potential. Can’t wait for the rest!

The Leftovers

This is an amazing book and I’m so glad they made it into a TV show! The show centers on the ‘rapture’ – where 2% of the world’s population mysteriously vanish. But instead of focusing on the people who vanish the show looks at those left behind, hence The Leftovers. So far the series looks damn promising!

The 100

Post-apocalyptic books and shows are becoming really popular (not that I’m complaining). In The 100, humans destroyed the Earth and are now living in space. After three generations in space they think that enough time has passed that Earth might just be habitable again. So they send 100 expendable kids to go investigate. You can tell that this was adapted from a teen novel because if the government wanted to see if Earth was habitable again, I highly doubt they’d send a bunch of kids to do such an important job. Ah well…

Outlander

OMG. So this time-travelling, Scottish love story has got such an interesting premise. A nurse accidentally gets transported back in time to 1743. Now she has to survive the warring clans, not get raped and try and find her way back to the future if she can. Honestly this story is interesting to me mainly because I would just die if I were suddenly transported to the past like that! Hah! It’s coming to TV in August. I can’t wait!

Anyway, what other book-to-TV adaptations are you excited about?

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