10 TV Shows That Strayed From The Source Material Too Much

Original television programming is often a tricky business. Producers can aim to attract a built-in audience (for instance, the well-known characters in Smallville), while hoping to exert creative freedom and evolve an expanding narrative.

All this can either be an exciting pathway or a confusing letdown, depending on the investment by both the show and the intended audience. The reason why the likes of Riverdale and The Office stray from their source material can vary, but each makes for a fascinating case study.

10 Clarice Couldn’t Step Out of the Silence of the Lamb’s Shadow

2021

This 2021 drama aired on CBS for exactly one season. While attempting to elongate The Silence of the Lambs titular character Clarice Starling past the Academy Award-winning film, showrunners Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman, despite their stellar work on the Star Trek Universe shows Picard and Discovery, missed that opportunity. Further complicating the premise were the legalities involving the mention of the Dr. Hannibal Lecter character, crucial to Starling’s backstory.

By omitting Lecter, focusing solely on Staring and remaking the narrative as a police procedural, the series suffered from a lack of textural nuances that The Silence of the Lambs had been rewarded for. Australian Rebecca Breeds was commendable in a role that originally gave Jodie Foster the Oscar, though behind the scenes creatives ultimately pushed the Starling character through a story which viewers and critics deemed an ineffectual standalone.

9 The Mask: Animated Series Lacked the Original Movie’s Charm

1995-1997

The transition from an adult-themed movie to a children’s cartoon requires a huge leap of faith. Case in point is the 1994 superhero comedy film The Mask. It solidified the rubber-face talents of comedian Jim Carrey, and introduced Cameron Diaz as love interest Tina Carlyle, although the movie emphasized humor over the explicit horror-themed series first published in 1987 by Dark Horse Comics. Luckily, Carrey’s portrayal of Stanley Ipkiss/The Mask netted him a Golden Globe nomination and boosted his status as a box office draw.

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The movie’s crossover to the world of simplified animation on CBS Syndication from 1995-1997, however, was less than satisfying. Reduced to a 2D universe, Mask: The Animated Series erased Tina Carlyle, lost Carrey’s voice and more frustratingly, sanitized the overall plot premise, reducing the show to a formula of regurgitated one-liners, hackneyed jump scares and annoying 1970s sound effects.

2012

The caustic wit and sardonic viewpoint of stand-up comic Chelsea Handler was given the memoir-to-television treatment in Are You There, Chelsea? for NBC in January 2012. Her 2008 semi-autobiographical essay book Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea appeared to be a good match for a weekly television audience looking for snappy adult dialogue, and a strong female lead who could handle life’s complicated matters with humor.

Unsurprisingly, what most appealed to Handler’s audience did not transcribe to Middle America. Although the casting of That ’70s Show Laura Prepon showed promise, it was the all-too-familiar generic setting – Prepon works in a bar surrounded by friends and relatives while relationships go wrong – didn’t have the bite and the R-rated narrative that was needed to convince viewers the show was cutting-edge funny. Consequently (and in spite of Handler being involved both on and off-screen), the show was canceled in March 2012 after only 12 episodes.

7 M*A*S*H Transcended the Big Screen as a Wartime Sitcom

1972-1983

By the time a media project reaches its third version, it might now be considered a franchise. When M*A*S*H arrived on television screens in September 1972, the premise had already been mined by a Robert Altman-directed 1970 film, which had its beginnings in a 1968 novel by Richard Hooker. The film version, which starred Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt, Elliott Gould and Robert Duvall in their respective positions as combat surgeons, were assigned to the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War and was a box-office hit.

When the 1972 TV series began, that was not the case. Bending to pressure from the CBS network, the show was filtered for language, surgery scenes and added a laugh soundtrack designed to subjugate the war narrative. As it continued to evolve over time, Hooker voiced his displeasure with how the series veered from its gritty origins. However, M*A*S*H‘s 11-year-run ended in 1983 with the most-watched finale of any scripted series on television.

6 The Office Reimagined The Workplace Comedy

2005-2013

The US version of The Office began its storied nine-year run on NBC in 2005. Based on the 2001-2003 UK series of the same name, the British mockumentary/off the wall comedy starred Ricky Gervais as the general manager of the fictional Wernham Hogg paper company and followed his clumsy and often awkward attempts at navigating social situations involving his employees, who also had ongoing interpersonal issues and celebrations within the colorful narrative’s run.

After the transfer to the US, Steve Carell was cast as Michael Scott, the regional manager of the fictitious Dunder Mifflin paper company’s Scranton, PA branch. While mimicking the UK premise, the series began to move fluidly away from the UK show, resulting in deeper storylines for the characters’ lives, allowing expansion by the actors to sometimes improvise and build on the series’ ever-evolving environment. The tailoring to American humor confirmed its acceptance, which led to a surge in tourism in Scranton and several awards, including the 2007 Peabody Award for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service” in television.

5 The American Version of Coupling Suffered From a Troubled Production

2003

The British sitcom Coupling was in the middle of a successful run on the BBC in 2003, depicting an ensemble cast in their early 30s with life events often told through multiple perspectives. When an American version was developed for NBC to debut in September of the same year, UK creator Steven Moffat (Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes) was tasked with formulating a series that would be seen as a replacement for Friends, then in its final season.

What Moffat didn’t foresee was the network’s interference with the show. That included the use of his original scripts tailored for the US market, the firing of three original actors and a perception of indecent content that forced various affiliates to broadcast Coupling at an inconvenient hour. These chaotic circumstances resulted in the show’s dismal reception by American viewers, and while a full season had been commissioned, NBC canceled Coupling after airing only four episodes, leaving six episodes unaired.

4 Under the Dome Bubbled With Suspense Courtesy of Stephen King

2013-2015

Considering the pedigree of the source material, the sci-fi mystery drama Under the Dome looked to be a surefire hit when it debuted on CBS in June 2013. Loosely based on Stephen King’s 2009 novel of the same name, the residents of the fictional community of Chester’s Mill are suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world by the explosion and expansion of a clear dome. The narrative follows the town’s residents inside and outside the dome in their attempts to penetrate the covering amid the dwindling resources and solve the mystery of its appearance.

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The show’s immediate success was due in no small part to King’s name association. However, several characters were combined with different plotlines for brevity and clarity. While Under the Dome enjoyed accolades early on, the series eventually moved on from the book’s ecological and political undertones. As dwindling viewership confirmed, the show concluded in September 2015 with a cliffhanger that hinted more material could follow. As of 2024, there has been no further news about this.

3 Wayward Pines Had Viewers On the Edge With a Starry Cast

2015-2016

As a sci-fi series, Wayward Pines was something of an anomaly when it was first announced as a limited-run series on Fox in May 2015. The initial ten-episode run was based on the novel Pines by Blake Crouch and the pilot episode was directed by Academy Award-nominee M. Night Shyamalan. With an A-list cast that included Matt Dillon, Toby Jones, Juliette Lewis and Terence Howard, the premise of a town’s mysterious hold on its residents and the implications of trying to leave kept the show on high simmer during its run.

In a surprise move, Fox renewed Wayward Pines for a second ten-episode season in 2016, with new cast members in the fold. Crouch had been writing the final two books in the planned Wayward Pines trilogy during the show’s development, thus the second season was an amalgamation of Wayward and The Last Town, by way of an untested cross-pollination, to finish the series.

2 The Innocent Charm of Archie Comics Took a Dark Turn in Riverdale

2017-2023

The 2017-2023 teen drama that aired on The CW was associated by name only with the beloved Archie Comics that began publishing in 1942. When the ensemble cast turned up in this alternate universe show with Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead as angst-ridden high-schoolers, the viewer was quickly absorbed into the murder of a teenager with the gang at the helm.

As Riverdale moved on, however, the series turned into a rollercoaster of convoluted storylines, which included a strange mash-up of supernatural powers, time travel and musicals. Then heartbreakingly, the real-life passing of Luke Perry in 2019 dealt a severe blow to the show’s overall health. Riverdale managed to weather an assortment of harsh social media backlash and absurd dialogue that flew in the face of beloved, canonical characters from an era that was certainly not rooted in reality.

1 The Night Manager’s Adaptation Was a Triumph

2016

In a curious twist to a project that industry insiders deemed unadaptable since the book was first published in 1993, John le Carré’s The Night Manager finally came to fruition in 2016. Adapted as a multi-part serial for BBC One in the UK and AMC in the US, the post-Cold War novel was a springboard for the sophisticated spy thriller starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Coleman.

While there have been numerous adaptations of le Carré’s work for television, The Night Manager succeeds in a manner that seems most fitting where others have failed. Among the show’s creative changes, Coleman’s part was gender-flipped from the novel and the series’ ending features more of an upside than the original (while hinting at a second series). There is probably a good chance that wandering far outside the boundaries, in this case, has proven more popular than once anticipated.