(no subject)

[skygiants]

Here is a terrible confession: if I had enough power over the television networks to make one show based on a book series come into existence -- one and only one! -- ... it would be Kage Baker's Company series.

Yes, OK, I know, but there are so many vids I want to exist, and you have to admit, it would be pretty. It would be so pretty! And every season could be a different time period -- season one would be Elizabeth England, season two nineteenth-century California, season three early Hollywood (I'm eliding the season of pre-Columbian America because I wouldn't trust the producers not to screw it up) -- and everything would be gorgeous costumes and conscious anachromisms, and we could have Oona Chaplin (with red hair) as Mendoza, and Naveen Andrews as Joseph, and Samuel Barnett as Lewis, and Alfie Enoch as Nicholas/Edward/Alec, and yes, I know that in the books Nicholas/Alec/Edward is white but honestly given that the villains make it a huge point to make sure he grows up feeling different and isolated and like he has massive amounts to prove in every incarnation there is no actual reason on God's earth why he should be white, I'll fight you on this, the only really important factors are that he is British and extremely good-looking but also so tall as to look kind of uncomfortably distorted, all of which factors Alfie Enoch epitomizes, and maybe if Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax didn't literally epitomize the Victorian British white male patriarchy in every possible way I would feel less of an urge to punch him in the face at every opportunity! Who knows!

...anyway the most important thing about this hypothetical television show that I would conjure into existence is that it would VERY DEFINITELY tragically cancelled after the fourth season, with all the main mysteries unresolved! TOO BAD, HOW SAD, I guess fandom will just have to fill the gap and no one ever needs to remember the horrible Nicholas/Edward/Alec/Mendoza orgy of messianic incest EVER AGAIN.

So that's my confession. The 98% of you who have never read any Kage Baker books are now blinking at me in total incomprehension but 2% of you, 2% of you understand, right? (I'm still not rereading them though. Not yet. I'LL CAVE SOMEDAY but in the meantime I will stave off that day as long as possible with incoherent public rants.)

What about you guys, if you had the power to bring one television show into existence, what would it be?

Comments

[musesfool]

I realize this is a ridiculously cliched answer, but Sandman. On HBO. But without Eric Kripke involved. With actual good people handling it, and, as much as I find his face repellent, Benedict Crumplesnatch as Morpheus. Because that would just be excellent casting. And Nicole Beharie as Death.

My other stock answer is Gotham Central, as overseen by David Simon. Also on HBO. And ONE MILLION times better than the awful mess "Gotham" is.

If not that, then a Blue Beetle (v3) show with Tyler Posey as Jaime Reyes. This keeps almost existing but not quite, and I just want Jaime, Paco, Brenda, Milagro, and Khaji Da to have teevee adventures.

Oh, also Peter Grant! Though i've heard rumors that's actually happening.

[aberration]

I'm still going to go with live action Utena. Somehow.

(Also I know that's not a book series, but that wasn't in the question in the very end and I... haven't read that many... book series... And also of any I have read my answer would still be live action Utena.)

[ashen_key]

Honor Harrington. Military sci-fi based roughly on the Napoleonics with a canonically half-Chinese lead and TONS OF AWESOME LADIES?

Yes. That. Please :D :D

And an adaptation can fix the various points of fail!

[wakeupnew]

I want a Heroes of Olympus series, which would probably have to be a weirdly serialized cartoon because of the special effects requirements, but I still really want it!!!

[gogollescent]

Unfortunately I think my answer for this is... "a Game of Thrones anime"

[gogollescent]

WAIT. ALSO. I genuinely want, like, HBO Lymond. Showtime Lymond. --Telenovela Lymond. Because what I love most in the world is kicking myself repeatedly in the head!

[graycardinal]

This is easy -- I hire Greg Weisman to bring back Gargoyles.

[skygiants]

oh my god, HBO Lymond

I

maybe it can be, like, Jane the Virgin-style, and the narrator is Alastair Dunnett, providing wry fourth-wall commentary in the key of existential despair

[skygiants]

Oh my God, Lexie, did you see the fake Heroes of Olympus anime opening that was going around tumblr a few weeks back? IT WAS AMAZING, I genuinely wanted that show.

[skygiants]

The key is to always pick something that has various points of fail to fix! So much more fun to think about that than all the ways that an adaptation of something genuinely amazing is bound to be horrific.

[skygiants]

YOU KNOW MY FEELINGS ON LIVE ACTION UTENA.

[skygiants]

I never got much into the Sandman thing, but Nicole Beharie would be an amazing Death.

...I'd trade all that for the Tyler Posey Blue Beetle show in a red hot minute, though. I'd probably trade the Peter Grant show, too, though, I mean, if it ends up happening I super won't complain!

[skygiants]

Picking shows that already existed is cheating! Top television necromancy candidates is an entirely different question.

[rymenhild]

Also, Nicholalec canonically has a whole lot of Neanderthal genes because he's related to the Enforcers. And... well, the Enforcers really shouldn't be white either, given the history of homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis.

Anyway, the showrunners would obviously decide that they didn't want to go to the fridging place or the incest place, and the show would go AU immediately after the introduction of Alec. Or maybe even before. Alec, who needs him?

I'm not sure what I want as a TV show, but if I could request a film (as long as the directors promise to do it right!!!!), I vote for Code Name Verity.

[aquamirage]

I didn't understand any of this but anything that brings Naveen Andrews back on TV on an actual quality show, I am all for.

I tend to think of it more as a movie, but I obviously think a lot about live-action Planetes, with Levi Schreiber and Zoe Saldana and maybe Michelle Rodriguez and [I DON'T KNOW ENOUGH JAPANESE ACTORS TO FINISH THIS SENTENCE].

[skygiants]

The Enforcers are definitely not white! And Joseph Imhotep 'Yeah I Blend In Just Fine In Egypt Or Spain Or Wherever, Why Do You Ask?' should never be cast as white.

I think a television show could do all right by Alec (especially with Bambi-eyed Alfie Enoch or someone similarly charming making him palatable), and a good director could have a lot of fun contrasting the bleak future aesthetic with all the lushness of the historical past, but, I mean, we also could skip it entirely. That would be OK too.

I'd be too afraid to ask for Code Name Verity! Even in the version where I got to control every aspect of it. I would screw it up. I am 100% certain of this.

[gogollescent]

...it is... really telling how easy a Jane the Virgin/Lymond crossover would be to construct. My god. EVEN IF I COULD NOT COUNTENANCE DOING THAT TO POOR PHILIPPA. You know, Jane's life certainly isn't without its problems, but at least I think we can assume that season 2 will not end in games of Unborn Baby Chess

[melannen]

If comics count, I still want Young Avengers done as a sitcom (or soap opera I guess) set in Billy & Teddy's first apartment together.

[skygiants]

Oh, man, Meredith, someday I will definitely gift you with my rant about the Company books. AWAIT THAT DAY, for it will be ... terrible ... terrible is probably the word.

ZOE SALDANA IN LIVE-ACTION PLANETES THOUGH. What a beautiful mental image.

[skygiants]

I want so many sitcom superhero shoes! I'm still mad that Agents of Shield is never going to be what I have always wanted it to be, namely, The Office in a world with superheroes.

[skygiants]

....I can't believe you just doomed poor Jane to a dramatic season ender of Tragic Unborn Baby Chess.

(Rogelio de la Vega cast as Lymond, though??? Forget 'HE WAS SIXTEEN THE WHOLE TIME!!!!' Nobody cares. Rogelio de la Vega certainly doesn't care.)

[jothra]

I want an epic fantasy TV show that is not on HBO. Something Tamora Pierce? Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife? Heck, I'd even take a Mercedes Lackey. I want some high-budget fantasy that isn't all T&A.

CROWN DUEL. I want the Crown Duel tv show. Season one: rebellion. Season two: ROMANCE.

[graycardinal]

/sigh/

Then too, Gargoyles is not book-derived (at least not unless one counts Shakespeare, and that only gets you a small percentage of the genesis).

Hmmm.

I'm torn between two : Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels ,which would be good because Duane has enough TV background that one could get her as showrunner, and Patricia Kennealy's Keltiad cycle ("Kelts Iiiiiinnnn Spaaaaaaaace!!!"), which would take an astonishing budget but would absolutely sparkle with a good cast and scripting.

[graycardinal]

There's a thought. And Smith's Dobrenica series (starting with Coronets and Steel would be a lot of fun to adapt, too -- it could be done well, I suspect, by some of the folks who are producing for the more interesting BBC subchannels.

[gogollescent]

you say that as if Rogelio de la Vega has not been sixteen this whole time

meditating, at the tender age of sixteen, on the top step of a Mayan temple

...God imagine his Marthe/Lymond fanfiction. His creative reinterpretation of Pawn in Frankincense as being About the tragic incest reveal. His earnest, earnest delivery of "I sometimes wonder if I only exist to be sacrificed to!"

ETA: After a moment's thought I have realized that we are essentially reverse-engineering Gilderoy Lockhart.