The five best TV shows based on movies

‘Bates Motel’ (2013-2017)

A modern-day reimagining/prequel of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho had no right being as good as Bates Motel was. For starters, was anyone really interested in the relationship between Norman Bates and his overbearing mother, Norma, which was hinted at so beautifully in Hitchcock’s classic thriller? By filling in the gaps and revealing the entire origin story of a mummy’s boy serial killer across hours and hours of television, wouldn’t that rob the tale of its primal power? Hell, would that central relationship even be enough to sustain a ten-episode season, let alone multiple seasons?

Thankfully, over the course of its five-season run, Bates Motel put all those fears in the boot of a metaphorical car and sank them to the bottom of a swamp. The show turned out to be a fascinating exploration of the uncomfortably close relationship between a mixed-up boy and his ever-so-slightly unhinged mother. Over time, it showed how their dysfunction could inadvertently lead to a confused sexual identity and, eventually, even murder. Lots of murder.

Both Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga excelled in their roles, and the show was able to develop a ton of compelling stories in the unusually crime-ridden streets of White Pine Bay, the sleepy Pacific Northwestern town they lived in. Heck, the show even created a brother for Norman out of thin air to be the audience surrogate, and he turned out to be one of the best characters – mostly because he’d tell Norman and Norma to their faces that their relationship was creepy as hell.

‘Westworld’ (2016-2022)

Westworld debuted on HBO with a huge amount of fanfare in 2016, and for a season, it was must-see TV. Audiences were captivated by the movie-level production values, the western-meets-sci-fi setting, and the cast, which included Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, and Evan Rachel Wood. Westworld asked pertinent questions about what it is to be human and why we have such dark impulses when we think there are no consequences to our actions. The fact that it did this while still being a scary and action-packed thrill ride made the show a complete triumph.

Over the next three seasons, though, Westworld gradually lost its grip on the mainstream audience. The more it delved into harder sci-fi concepts that left the original 1973 movie behind, the more people seemed to lose interest, and by the end of its fourth season, a treatise against AI that barely resembled the show it once was, viewing figures had dwindled so low that it was canceled without the chance to make a final season to tie everything together.

Luckily for me, the further Westworld went down the rabbit hole, the more a sci-fi nerd like me loved it. I found the third and fourth seasons, which dealt with a brewing war between humanity, a villainous AI construct named Rehoboam, and an army of freed Hosts (biomechanical robots who look exactly like humans) to be as compelling as anything that came before. Sure, the show occasionally devolved into ponderous philosophising, but it also had killer robots shooting each other. What’s not to like?

‘Hannibal’ (2013-2015)

When I first heard that a Hannibal Lecter TV show was in development, but that it was being made by NBC, I had a good ol’ scoff to myself. “This’ll be a disaster,” I said with a haughty chuckle. How could any lame mainstream network show do justice to the fiendishly dark and gruesome tale of everyone’s favourite cannibalistic serial killer/erudite high-society forensic psychiatrist? Surely the creators’ hands would be tied in terms of how far they could push the violence and harrowing psychological horror?

Then, I sat down to watch the first episode of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, and quickly realised I literally couldn’t have been more wrong if I’d tried. Fuller hadn’t toned down Lecter and his world at all. If anything, he’d pushed it further into gothic, grand guignol territory, and it assaulted the eyes with nightmarish imagery that would’ve made HBO say, “Steady on, mate.” Maybe he managed to sneak things past the censors with how artistically the show presented its sickening death tableaus, but either way, it was astonishing to witness.

Naturally, anything that pushed boundaries as much as Hannibal wasn’t destined to be long for this world. However, it left a three-season legacy as one of the best movie-to-TV adaptations ever, and proved that audiences would accept someone other than Anthony Hopkins playing Lecter. Mads Mikkelsen’s debonair, calculating, and terrifyingly aloof Lecter, I salute you.

‘Fargo’ (2014-2024)

I love Noah Hawley’s Fargo with a passion. To me, it’s the ideal example of how to translate a movie to television without repeating the film’s story. Instead, Hawley captured the spirit and tone of the Coen brothers’ quirky 1996 noir comedy and applied it to five original anthology stories. Along the way, he allowed the show to take inspiration from other Coen flicks as well, such as No Country for Old Men, Miller’s Crossing, and The Big Lebowski, yet somehow kept it unmistakably ‘Fargo’ at all times, too. It’s a pretty masterful trick.

In my oh-so-humble opinion, there isn’t a bad season of Fargo. Season three, which starred Ewan McGregor as a pair of hapless twins caught in the crosshairs of David Thewlis’ menacing VM Varga, is probably my least favourite, but I’d still gladly watch it over most things. Chris Rock’s season, a ’50s-set tale of two rival crime syndicates trading their youngest sons in a futile effort to keep the peace, is also hugely underrated, in my book.

However, if I was to recommend a season to a newcomer that best demonstrates what is so amazing about Hawley’s interpretation of the Coens’ sinister-yet-kooky, ‘anything goes’ style, I’d have to toss a coin between season one (Martin Freeman and hitman Billy Bob Thornton in a battle of wits) and season two (a ‘70s crime epic that boasts a rogue flying saucer). Then again, season five (a housewife’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her when a potentially immortal sin-eater from ancient Wales kidnaps her) is also pretty incredible. Yes, you did read that right. It’s super weird.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1997-2003)

For me, this one was never in doubt. The king (or queen) of movies turned into TV shows will always be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, precisely because it was so successful as a series that a large portion of its fanbase has likely never even seen the movie. I’d even wager a fairly hefty chunk of people don’t even know Kristy Swanson’s rinky-dink 1992 film exists, which speaks to why creator Joss Whedon all-but-disowned it.

Obviously, these days Whedon has been revealed to be a questionable sort, and his career has justly suffered for it. He doesn’t sound like a particularly nice man, and some members of his Buffy cast have even told horror stories about how he treated them. It’s a hard pill to swallow for any fan of the show, especially one like me who was 11 years old when the first season debuted in 1997. I watched Buffy for its entire seven-season run in real time, so the ‘Scooby Gang’, as the primary group of characters became known, will always have a nostalgic place in my heart.

At the core of the matter, like many other people who came of age watching Buffy, it’s hard to argue that the show shaped a lot of my tastes in storytelling. I can still remember watching the genuinely frightening silent episode ‘Hush’, as well as ‘Killed by Death’, a harrowing episode that stuck with me about a demon killing sick children in a hospital. In truth, Buffy was one of my first TV favourites, and even though I’ve not revisited it as an adult, I reckon it still handily takes top spot in my list.