The most galling thing about this show is that in many ways it’s very good, and it seems to have been very well received. The latter may be because (unlike LotR, Star Wars, Star Trek), there isn’t a huge fandom around the book waiting to spot every change from canon. (Just me!) If I had come to this show cold, knowing nothing about Rice’s books, I probably would have liked it a lot and now consider myself a fan.
The problem is it has almost nothing to do with the book. And, yes, that is a problem for an adaption. It’s not for a fan fic (which is what this is, a very AU fan fic), and it’s not for the 700th iteration of a classic story like King Arthur or the Trojan War. But for the one legally allowable adaption of a copyrighted work, for which AMC paid millions of dollars to forestall anyone else from adapting it—yes, having nothing to do with the thing it’s adapting is a problem. Whatever the showrunners may say, whatever they may believe, it is disrespectful to the book. It essentially says, “The book is worthless; it’s not even worth engaging with except for some vague name recognition.”
And it’s not worthless. It’s not a work of genius, but it’s a good book. It’s an unusual book and an important book in the history of vampire lore, and it deserved an adaption, not a radically AU knock-off. And, no, the 1994 movie was not the adaption it needed. It was 1000 times more an adaptation than this, but it was poorly cast and did not capture much of the spirit.
But before I complain more, let me offer some things I liked:
(SPOILERS for season 1 follow…)( Read more… )
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