The qualifier “Based on the book by…” has become more commonplace on TV in the age of Prestige TV and the boom of the miniseries. In recent years, screenwriters and directors have opted to adapt their favorite fiction and nonfiction works on the small screen instead of via the traditional theatrical route. This is due in large part to the extra time the medium affords them to fully flesh out the characters and replicate the level of detail employed by the book’s author. While theatrical literary adaptations won’t cease anytime soon, the growth of the miniseries over the past two decades and their evolving appeal to movie stars have made the medium an attractive avenue for authors and those looking to adapt their works. It’s only logical to favor telling their stories in four to ten episodes instead of a two-hour runtime.
As a network, HBO has immensely benefited from this shift. A spearhead of the miniseries surge, HBO consistently delivers critically lauded and buzzworthy seasons of television. Thanks to its dependable track record, the premium cable network has attracted some of the best fiction and nonfiction writers and an assembly of television writers, actors, and directors to create some truly spectacular miniseries. These are the best HBO miniseries based on books, ranked by how well they adapt the source material, how acclaimed they were on release, and their overall legacy.
10
‘Show Me a Hero’ (2015)
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Lisa Belkin‘s nonfiction book, Show Me a Hero, details a white middle-class neighborhood in Yonkers’ resistance to a federal order demanding that the New York town provide affordable housing to its citizens, regardless of race. Perhaps best known for creating one of television’s greatest shows, David Simon collaborated with his frequent The Wire writer, William F. Zorzi, to adapt the book for HBO.
Starring Oscar Isaac as the recently elected 28-year-old Mayor of Yonkers, Nick Wasicsko, Show Me a Hero tracks the aftermath of the federal order and the various protests that erupted to stop it from being enacted. The protests ranged from the normal residents of Yonkers to the city officials and councilors who consistently refused to uphold any desegregation laws. Directed by Paul Haggis, the show visualizes the scope of the conflict while giving voice to the personal stakes inherent in it. Unfortunately, as with most political and bureaucratic tragedies, the themes of Show Me a Hero remain prevalent to the present day. Positively, the show posits the idea that, try as the loud minority attempts to stop it, change will always come, and as a society, we are all the better for it.
9
‘John Adams’ (2008)
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Before he was the butt of the jokes in Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s Hamilton, John Adams was the subject of a 7-part HBO miniseries. Stuck in between the overpowering legacies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the 2008 miniseries sought to highlight one of America’s more overlooked founding fathers. Written by Kirk Ellis, directed by Tom Hooper, and executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, the miniseries was adapted from the 2001 book of the same name by David McCullough.
The show, which begins in 1770, ambitiously covers 50 years, chronicling John Adams’ entire political career and the first 50 years of America’s independence, all the way to his death on July 4th, 1826. Paul Giamatti portrays the founding father and second President of the United States, with Laura Linney as his wife, Abigail. Both performances were universally lauded, leading to Emmy wins for both actors. With 13 Emmy wins, John Adams remains the most-awarded miniseries in Emmy history.
8
‘The Plot Against America’ (2020)
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In a story that could have been relevant at any point in the past 80 years but exponentially more so in the last decade, Philip Roth‘s quasi-autobiographical, alternate history novel, The Plot Against America, tells the story of the Roth family during a 1940s Charles Lindbergh presidency. After declining multiple approaches to adapt the novel for television, David Simon – along with another The Wire collaborator, Ed Burns – finally decided to create The Plot Against America in the aftermath of the results of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections.
In both the novel and the show, Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential Election, and through his xenophobic, populist, and isolationist policies, turns the nation towards fascism. Told through the lens of a working-class Jewish family (Levin, in the miniseries), the show never hides from the bleakness of its story and its stark similarities to the present day. The Plot Against America warns of the constant cycle of evil and the relative ease at which the worst parts of our society can overwhelm us if the good parts don’t stand against them. Zoe Kazan and Morgan Spector lead an ensemble cast that includes Winona Ryder, John Turturro, Anthony Boyle and David Krumholtz.
7
‘The Outsider’ (2020)
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A list of book adaptations would be incomplete without an appearance by the prolific “King of Horror” Stephen King. Continuing his prolific output on HBO, Richard Price adapted King’s 2018 novel, The Outsider, into a 10-episode season led by Ben Mendelsohn and Cynthia Erivo. In the story, an investigation is triggered, and unsettling questions are asked when a young boy is found dead with suspicious bite marks. Audiences unfamiliar with the source material may initially find it hard to believe that The Outsider is a Stephen King adaptation. Like the best fiction adaptations, Richard Price’s teleplay takes liberties with the source material that add up to a successful television show, if not necessarily a great piece of horror.
Price chooses to depict the story as predominantly a crime procedural before later sprinkling in the book’s horror elements as the story progresses. However, when he does introduce these supernatural elements, Price makes sure not to hold anything back. With fantastic performances from Mendelsohn and Erivo as well as a supporting cast of Jason Bateman, Bill Camp and Julianne Nicholson, The Outsider is one of HBO’s best miniseries. While there have been false starts about a second season, the first season tells a complete, self-contained story, and until a second season is made, we can appreciate it for the spectacular miniseries it was.
6
‘Sharp Objects’ (2018)
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Perhaps no author’s works more perfectly illustrate the shift toward television adaptations than Gillian Flynn. After a very successful film adaptation of Gone Girl in 2014 and a less successful adaptation of Dark Places in 2015, Marti Noxon chose to adapt Gillian Flynn’s debut novel, Sharp Objects, as an HBO miniseries. The author would also join the producing and writing teams, with the late, great Jean-Marc Vallée directing all eight episodes.
At the center of the show is an emotionally raw performance by Amy Adams as Camille Preaker, a reporter attempting to bury her past who returns home to investigate the murders of two young girls. Her homecoming and investigation into the vicious murders force her to confront both her relationship with her mother (Patricia Clarkson) and her larger, buried trauma. Jean-Marc Vallée carries over his deft directing from the first season of Big Little Lies in handling the show’s overarching mystery. However, Sharp Objects‘ biggest achievement is how it masterfully examines Camille’s damaged psyche while steadily revealing why her mind remains arrested in the past and the many physical ways she has unsuccessfully tried to move on.
Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours.
Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from
the encounter.
Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you
completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the
conversation is.
- Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He
never raises his voice, because he has never needed to. - You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve
is exactly the door he would knock on. - The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence.
It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person. - He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.
Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is
after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.
- The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence
against him. It is the entire reason he showed up. - He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool
you would normally reach for. - His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend
the rest of your life proving him wrong. - He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.
Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work
out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.
- Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from:
a mind the equal of the hero’s, pointed the wrong way. - You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he
has already built the room. - This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs
the game to be worth playing. - It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.
Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that
is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.
- Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the
answer was decided long before you opened your mouth. - You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no
interest in how capable you are. - No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences
quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work. - Call it. He will wait.
5
‘Mildred Pierce’ (2011)
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James M. Cain‘s eponymous 1941 novel has the distinct pleasure of receiving both a film and a television adaptation. The novel was first adapted into a Joan Crawford-starring, Oscar-winning film noir before Todd Haynes adapted it once more as a miniseries for HBO. The filmmaker enlisted Kate Winslet for her first HBO production to play the titular Mildred Pierce. Set during the Great Depression, Mildred Pierce follows a recent divorcée juggling her new restaurant, a burgeoning love life, and trying to please her increasingly vain and demanding daughter, Veda (Evan Rachel Wood).
Todd Haynes takes his time — both in the show’s production and storytelling — to fully realize the world. Every frame and design of the show bursts with obvious attention to detail and immaculate production design and cinematography. Eschewing the film-noir approach of the original adaptation, the miniseries leans into the inherent emotionality of the characters and their relationships. It thoroughly examines the single-mother-new-lover-spoilt-child dynamic among the three main characters. The result is a sensitive depiction of a woman trying to start over and the lengths she will have to go to, set against the backdrop of the Great Depression’s severe austerity. Anchored by Emmy-winning performances from Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce is an excellently detailed book-to-screen adaptation well worth your time.
4
‘Olive Kitteridge’ (2014)
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Elizabeth Strout‘s 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge is a collection of 13 interrelated short stories, with the earliest written as far back as 1992. The character of Olive Kitteridge has a main role in most of the stories but a lesser role in others. In creating the HBO miniseries adaptation, Jane Anderson adapted the novel into four semi-standalone installments, with Olive Kitteridge serving as the constant throughline.
In choosing to interpret Strout’s novel this way, Jane Anderson and director Lisa Cholodenko focus on Olive’s worldview while investigating the previous versions of her character and subtly foreshadowing the upcoming changes she would undergo. Led by an Emmy-winning performance from Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge is a must-watch miniseries adaptation that paints a complex, misanthropic, depressed, and ultimately sympathetic portrait of the eponymous Olive. McDormand’s work is supported by similarly impressive and Emmy-winning performances from Richard Jenkins and Bill Murray.
3
‘We Own This City’ (2022)
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Returning to HBO and the streets of Baltimore, David Simon and George Pelecanos‘ We Own This City tackles the real-life rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. The six-episode miniseries, based on a nonfiction book of the same name by Justin Fenton, employs several points of view and timelines to extensively portray the wide-reaching impact of the police department’s corruption.
Shepherded by his King Richard director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Jon Bernthal produces a quintessential villain performance. Bernthal’s Wayne Jenkins (based on the real-life, convicted Wayne Jenkins) is charismatic and horrific in equal measure. His performance simultaneously straddles subtlety and over-the-top mustache-twirling, leading to an utterly complex and well-rounded villain. The efforts of Simon, Pelecanos, Green, and Bernthal lead to an incredible series that captivates from the first minute and shines a light on the cultures of silence that run through police departments. In the case of Bernthal’s Wayne Jenkins, the show also highlights the level of reach evil and charismatic figures can have on their wider societies.
2
‘Watchmen’ (2019)
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Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 graphic novel Watchmen remains a seminal piece of superhero literature. However, for his HBO miniseries, Damon Lindelof opted against a direct adaptation of the graphic novel and created the miniseries as a sequel set 34 years after the novel’s events. This proved to be an inspired choice as Lindelof maintained the original story’s themes while parlaying them into discussions about America’s current (and upcoming) frustrations. In fact, Watchmen is so prophetic and incisive in its cultural analysis that it may be difficult to believe that it aired on HBO ahead of the societally and politically tumultuous year of 2020.
Aided by Emmy-winning performances from Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Matten II, Watchmen efficiently tackles discussions on race, institutionalized racism, legacy, power, identity, and much more. A central theme is America’s historical relationship with race and how it chooses to disregard its crimes against its minorities, most especially the horrific events of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. In addition to the show’s Emmy win for Outstanding Limited Series, future Oscar winner Cord Jefferson (American Fiction) won an Emmy for co-writing Watchmen‘s excellent sixth episode, which dealt with a Black vigilante’s crime-fighting efforts in 1938.
1
‘Band of Brothers’ (2001)
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Following their very successful collaboration in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks returned to the World War 2 milieu with Band of Brothers, an adaptation of Stephen E. Ambrose‘s nonfiction book of the same name. It follows the “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, a group of paratroopers in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division. The members are portrayed by a large ensemble of actors led by Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston, and David Schwimmer. It also features a host of up-and-coming acting talent, including appearances from Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Scott, and more.
The story follows the members of the “Easy” Company from their training to the landing in Normandy and the invasion of Germany, all the way to the end of the war. Arguably the most iconic HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers revolutionized military storytelling with its immense scope and ambition. As one would expect from a show co-created by Steven Spielberg, the battle scenes are expertly made and immediately immerse the audience in their chaotic nature. However, the show is much more than an exhibition of its movie-quality filmmaking. By including interviews with the company’s real-life surviving members, the show grounds its story in reality and underlines the truth. Throughout its run, Band of Brothers balances immersive action and World War 2 re-staging with prescient and delicate discussions on mental health and PTSD. So warmly was it received that it spawned two spiritual sequels: The Pacific (2010), also on HBO, and Masters of the Air (2024) on Apple TV.
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