Joe Miller
Contributing Writer
My neighborhood bookstore in D.C. sells a T-shirt bearing the slogan “The Book Was Better.”
The unspoken “better than” is, of course, a film or TV adaptation of the book, and a lot of avid readers are vocal about the preference for books.
I’m a little more ambivalent. Books, television and film are different media and I’m fine with the idea that adaptations usually change the source material.
Still, not all adaptations work.
I thought it might be fun to close out the year by looking at a few adaptations from 2025 (plus one from late 2024 that I was late getting to) to see which worked and which didn’t.
The book was better
Mickey7, by Edward Ashton, is a reasonably entertaining science fiction tale that touches on deep philosophical questions about personhood and personal identity.
Mickey is part of a small colony attempting to settle an inhospitable planet. Mickey serves as the expedition’s “expendable.” He is sent on missions that are almost certain to be fatal. When he dies, his body is reprinted and his most recent memories are uploaded to his new body.
An unlikely series of events results in Mickey 8 being printed while Mickey 7 is still alive. Much of the book revolves around Mickey 7’s realization that if he dies again, he’ll truly die. Future Mickeys will descend from Mickey 8, who is now a different person, with different memories than Mickey 7.
Mickey 17, directed by Bong Joon Ho, trades the interesting philosophical musings for spectacle and some light body horror. A solid, against-type performance from Robert Pattinson in the title role is overshadowed by Mark Ruffalo’s Saturday Night Live-esque Trump impersonation.
I liked the book well enough to read its sequel, Antimatter Blues. I’d recommend skipping the film adaptation and watching Bong’s far superior Snowpiercer or his Oscar-winning Parasite.
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I really disliked the first season of Murderbot (Apple TV+).
I devoured all seven books in Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series toward the end of 2023, and I was excited to see Apple take them on. In general, the network has done an excellent job with its science fiction adaptations.
The series follows the titular Murderbot – a security unit cyborg with an organic human brain and mostly machine parts. Security units are slaves, owned by an unnamed Company and programmed to obey the orders of the clients who rent security units from the Company. Murderbot has hacked its programming, giving itself free will.
Murderbot exhibits traits that, in a human, we would probably describe as high-functioning autism.
The books – which are written from Murderbot’s first-person perspective – chronicle Murderbot’s struggle to find its place in the world, to become a member of a community and not just a thing protecting it.
The series is worse in just about every way.
Physically, Alexander Skarsgård nails the role of Murderbot. He towers over his costars, and his physical perfection teeters at the edge of the uncanny valley.
Tonally, the performance is entirely wrong. Skarsgård’s Murderbot is cynical and jokey – a sitcom character dropped into the middle of an ostensible drama (a feeling exacerbated by the showrunners’ decision to adopt the traditional 24-minute runtime of standard sitcoms).
The show might be good if you’ve never read the books. As an adaptation, it’s a trainwreck.
Mickey7 and The Murderbot Diaries are my favorite type of science fiction: the extended thought experiment. They take real philosophical puzzles and flesh (ha!) them out enough for us to examine them from many angles.
They serve as hooks for engaging with philosophy.
It’s certainly possible to do that in film or television. For all its (many) flaws, the first season of HBO’s Westworld includes a truly remarkable scene in which we watch Dolores Abernathy, a human-like robot, achieve self-awareness. It’s a powerful scene and a masterful bit of acting from Evan Rachel Wood.
With a better script, Robert Pattinson might have given us a similarly profound moment. Better scripts wouldn’t have saved Murderbot. That show needs a better everything.
The book was different
Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series follows the career of Mickey Haller, an LA defense attorney who eschews an office in favor of the backseat of one of his many identical Lincolns.
Haller is the half-brother of Harry Bosch, Connelly’s famous police officer and detective, who appears in 25 of Connell’s 38 (and counting) interconnected novels.
Literary Haller is pretty much always hustling for work. He’s won a few big cases, but they almost never seem to set him up quite as comfortably as he is hoping. Haller alternates between pushing ethical boundaries in defense of his clients and making poor personal decisions – particularly when it comes to his romantic life.
The Mickey Haller series has been adapted into a rather forgettable 2011 film and an ongoing Netflix series The film and the series are unconnected, though rather confusingly both are called The Lincoln Lawyer.
The Netflix series is a bit lighter than the books. Television Haller remains unlucky in love, but he is far less self-destructive than his literary incarnation. He’s also much more firmly committed to doing what’s right while staying within the rules.
Most of the changes from the books are driven by the needs of a different medium. TV Haller has an office (as shows need consistent sets) and several roles are expanded (as shows need to give cast members something to do).
Sadly, Haller’s relationship to Bosch disappears, as Connelly sold the rights to Bosch to a different network.
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Literary Mickey Haller may be prone to some bad decision making, but Bad Monkey’s Andrew Yancey turns the self-destructive tendencies up to 11.
Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel finds Key West detective Yancey suspended after assaulting his current lover’s husband. The closest thing Yancey can find to a job in law enforcement is a gig as the local health inspector.
“Yancey finds himself dragged into an investigation that involves insurance fraud, a monkey who was fired from Friends, an annoying neighbor, crooked real estate deals, a missing hand and a voodoo witch.
It’s quite the ride.
The television series of the same name (Apple TV+) is relatively faithful to the plot. Vince Vaughn plays Yancey and, honestly, it might be the best piece of casting of all time.
Vaughn pretty much always plays the same character – fast-talking, selfish, kind of sleazy but charming enough that you don’t care, down-on-his-luck, sneakily smart and usually possessed of a heart of gold underneath all his other baggage.
Literary Andrew Yancey is every Vince Vaughn character ever.
The television series tightens the plot, de-ages two important secondary characters and makes its villains a tad more sympathetic.
Neither The Lincoln Lawyer nor Bad Monkey is great television. But then again, the books on which they are based aren’t exactly Pulitzer contenders. They’re all (books and TV series) reasonably entertaining, and are far from the worst things you could be reading or watching.
If you pressed me to choose between the books or the show, I’d say read The Lincoln Lawyer books and watch Bad Monkey. Down-on-his luck, morally ambiguous literary Mickey Haller is a touch more interesting than his TV counterpart. Andrew Yancey just is Vince Vaughn, so you might as well watch him perform the role.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear
The Never Game, by Jeffery Deaver, introduced the world to Colter Shaw, a survivalist who earns his living collecting rewards for finding missing people.
I’d never encountered Deaver before, so I spent the first half of The Never Game chalking up its (many) rough edges to a novice writer and his first book.
I was surprised to learn that Deaver has been writing since the late 1980s and had published a boatload of books prior to 2019’s The Never Game. Indeed, Deaver appears to be publishing an average of a book-and-a-half per year.
Perhaps the others are better written.
Colter Shaw is Discount Jack Reacher. A drifter with few personal possessions. A rugged man’s man who proves irresistible to the ladies. A psychologically scarred man carrying a freight train’s worth of familial baggage. A man possessed of a cast of friends who do the real (if boring) investigating off page. A series of flashbacks to some previous case that serves as a thinly veiled deus ex machina for resolving the current problem.
It’s a formula. Get it right and you can churn out a lot of books. (See also Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt and David Baldacci’s Travis Devine. Or go back a bit to Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan or Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon.)
Deaver’s characters lack depth. His pacing is uneven. His dialogue tends toward info-dumps.
The series is the basis for the hit CBS procedural, Tracker, which ended the 2024-5 season as the highest-rated, scripted program on broadcast television.
I’m not entirely opposed to a show that has “hit” or “CBS” or “procedural” in the description, but it takes some truly great source material to convince me to give it a shot (see: Sherlock Holmes and Elementary).
Unfortunately, The Never Game is no A Study in Scarlet.
