becke_davis wrote:
momgee wrote:
If you like mysteries set in England, you might like Caroline Graham. I read Killing at Badger's Drift and The Ghost in the Machine. I liked them enough to continue on with the series.
This is one of those rare cases where I like the TV show based on her books better than the books themselves. The British series Midsomer Murders was based on her books, but became so popular (11 seasons and counting) that they made many, many more episodes than there were books.
I liked the portrayal of the detectives better than in the books. She also seemed to have a dislike for redheads, and I'm partial to them -- once upon a time, I was one, as is my son and as are my brother and sister.
If there isn't already a whole other thread on these boards concerned with the subject of the differences between the original texts of Mystery Stories and their adaptions to the video format, (whether with good, bad or indifferent results), then there should be...
With the Mystery genre in particular ( although this seems to be true to a large extent with other literary genres, when they are being adapted into movies or TV shows ) there is a tendency to eliminate characters that were present in the original stories, and to otherwise streamline the story for presentation, also to the point of finagling with the plot lines...
One of the first times this really dawned on me was when, after many years of watching
the PBS/BBC "Mystery!" adaptions ( of stories from A. Conan Doyle,
Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers,
Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Colin Dexter,
I started reading several of the books from the "Inspector Morse" series ( by Mr Dexter ) --
Before this, the only authors who works were being adapted for the program with whom I was very familiar with were Mr Doyle & Agatha Christie ---
I felt like the "Mystery!" adaptions of these particular authors were exceedingly excellent -
almost everything that one could hope for in a faithful and meticulously accurate adaption of these time-honored classics...
As far as I could tell, the plot lines in the TV versions were faithful to the original stories as well as capturing the feeling and essence of the original stories, as well...
Now, I am aware that Mr Dexter himself acted as a consultant for the "Mystery!" - "Inspector Morse" series, and changes were possibly made with his tacit approval, but, at one point I had read "The Way Through The Woods" - and when I then saw the TV version, I was horrified at the way in which the story had been truncated ( to be sqeezed into the hour and a half or so ) and the ending had been completely altered, and with an unnecessarily shocking and melodramatic, violent conclusion ....
"Middle-earth Is A State Of Mind"
^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^
Ardo Whortleberry
