The Stranger
I'll be honest, The Stranger almost slipped right under my radar. I saw it on the front page of Netflix and was like, is that Dutch from Killjoys? And once I figured out that yes, it was Hannah John-Kamen, my interest disappeared until an episode of The Graham Norton Show. I literally watch every episode of Graham's show even if I hate the guests because he somehow makes everyone come alive, though the one big exception was Laura Linney's recent appearance. Laura was working her ass off and the other guests, Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, and Stephen Mangan, fell painfully flat. Shame on you three! Yet it gave me a new respect for Laura, so good on her. Anyway, Jennifer Saunders was on with Patrick Stewart, Jamie Foxx, and Michael B. Jordan, so a typical Graham couch, tons of A-listers and a comedian at the end of the couch. Only Jennifer was there to promote her first dramatic outing, The Stranger. I was all, what!?! Huh!?! Tell me more about walking across this car park!?! So I looked into the show more and saw it stared Richard Armitage!?! Be still my heart! So yes, thanks to Graham I didn't miss this show about a stranger played by Hannah John-Kamen arriving in a small yet tony British town and upsetting everyone's lives with a little helping of the truth and a whole lot of blackmail. There's a LOT of Broadchurch thrown in when they decided to move Harlan Coben's story from America to the British Isles, but that's part of the charm. It's nothing too original and many of the plot twists I saw coming from a long way off, but the acting and the cast made it enjoyable. Could I always have Antony Stewart Head play Richard Armitage's father? Because that would be a joy I would love to repeat. Seriously, when Rupert Giles appeared in the credits I squeed. This is very much a mystery I would have been sad to have missed.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado and Dani
The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Battle Ground by Jim Butcher
The Nesting by C.J. Cooke
A Pretty Deceit by Anna Lee Huber
Murder at Queen's Landing by Andrea Penrose
A Natural History of Fairies by Emily Hawkins and Jessica Roux
Seeing how Vagrant Queen seemed to come and go at lightning speed I view it as my duty to say that this show deserved so much better than being quickly shuffled to a bad time slot and then unceremoniously dumped. The show is fun and colorful and zany and kitschy, like the best 80s science fiction series you could ever hope to encounter with heart and humor. What other show has their battle in the "mandatory science fiction fight club episode" be a karaoke sing-off to the theme from Mannequin!?! Seriously, if there's another show that has done this I need to know to fill the Vagrant Queen sized hole in my life. Perhaps I embraced this show because it reminded me a bit of Killjoys with a dash of Farscape, or perhaps it's because I actually subscribe to comiXology and had targeted ads for the comics so when I got my SyFy newsletter announcing the show I instantly set up a recording for the series on my DVR and was therefore lucky enough to catch the show being one of the few who saw the advertisements in advance. Because seriously, the SyFy Channel just didn't advertise this show enough, as I said before, it deserved better than being just sent out to die. Plus it has something for every science fiction fan! For those who like lots of mythology and a space opera with a crown, there's Elida, the deposed ruler. For those who like their shows full of vengeance, there's Lazaro and his big chip on his shoulder where it comes to Elida. For those who like a funny man with a tragic backstory, there's Isacc, flung into another galaxy, not yours, far from Earth and his wife and child. And for those who like a love story, there's Elida and the gadget wizard Amae. I ship these two so hard. But to top it all off in their episode "No Clue" they do the best send up of the movie Clue only superseded by the Psych episode "100 Clues" because they had most of the cast from the movie in it. And it's Psych.
There's FINALLY an adaptation of 
A Bride's Story, Volume 12 by Kaoru Mori
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
Kenny and the Book of Beasts by Tony DiTerlizzi
The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
Dead Man in a Ditch by Luke Arnold
Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards
There are SO MANY adaptations of A Christmas Carol it's hard to find a unique new spin to get viewers to watch yet another version. Why would I want to subject myself to another adaptation that could never compare to the humor and horror of Scrooged, which in my mind is the only version worth watching, though I will let you argue in favor of the Muppets. The answer is Steven Knight. Steven Knight created the masterpiece that is Taboo, which I'm still waiting on season two and will gladly wait for years Steven just so you know! He's more commonly known for creating Peaky Blinders and oddly enough being one of the three creators of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? So with Steven Knight at the helm and Guy Pearce staring and Andy Serkis bringing the haunting, I knew it was going to be dark and gritty, so I was instantly sold. Because, I'm sorry, the Victorian age was dark and gritty, and Dickens usually reflected that reality, except oddly enough in this, his most popular piece. So bring on the dark! Bring on the weird backstory about Scrooge being sexually abused? OK, I guess... I mean, it's nice to have some justification as to why Scrooge became who he was but there seemed to be too much riding on this revelation. To me it felt like the adaptation was saying abuse gives you a free pass to be a dick, but if possible, don't be one. So while I loved all this magic and mystery and the reason why these ghosts were called to haunt Scrooge, I felt that the backstory should have been finessed. Yet if we didn't get the backstory we wouldn't have gotten the dream sequence of Kayvan Novak, AKA Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows, as Ali Baba... now that's a tough choice to make. Let's go back to the Christmas wasteland with Marley and mull that over while Andy Serkis throws another memory on the pyre. 
Lengthening shadows, the feeling of being watched, shots from Creature from the Black Lagoon stalking it's prey, a beautiful young swimmer who doesn't know the danger lurking right beneath the surface. No one can say this adaptation of Michelle McNamara's book on the Golden State Killer lacks style. Yet for me it wasn't just the style, it was the substance that kept me turning in week after week. It delved deeper than the book into the subject of being a woman and being a survivor and that made the documentary even more relevant today. A more human approach. Hearing the stories from the survivors intercut with stock footage from the time period and the hunt for the rapist in the 70s and 80s somehow made the era come alive, it grounded everything and made it more real. What's more there's a frank discussion about what it's like to be a woman, the whole idea that women are told to dress and behave a certain way to not become victims instead of teaching men to not attack women. The sheer number of rapists working in one area of California at that time shows the pervasiveness of sexual assault against women and the danger we constantly feel and I felt seen and heard tuning in every week. In fact it got me wondering, would the East Area Rapist, despite his reign of terror, ever have become the boogie man of suburban California with the longevity to be relevant today if he hadn't escalated to couples and then killing? Would he have been forgotten as just another rapacious rapist that was just gone in the dark? Who knows. But Michelle's personal drive, her personal journey was just as important as the other survivors, because in the end she became EARONS last victim.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Secret Legacy by Carissa Andrews
The Wicked Cometh by Laura Carlin
Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp
Horrid by Katrina Leno
The Forgotten Kingdom by Signe Pike
Mystical Places by Sarah Baxter
Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen
Sue and Tai-chan by Konami Konato
Kusama by Elisa Macellari
More Than a Woman by Caitlin Moran
Georgian Recipes and Remedies by Michael J. Rochford
A Witness to Murder by Verity Bright
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini
Castle Rock might just be the most interesting adaptation out there because for it's inspiration it's not taking just one Stephen King book but a whole heck of a lot of them and mashing them up in new and unique ways. Besides all the stunt casting of actors who have previously been in King adaptations from Sissy Spacek to Tim Robbins to Bill Skarsgard, the references to King's works are just staggering, from The Shinning to Needful Things to Cujo, seriously, just google "Easter Eggs Castle Rock" and you're going to get so many lists you'll be reading for days. Why I was especially excited for season two was because Misery was coming to Castle Rock. Now of all Stephen King's books that I've read for some reason Misery has always been a favorite of mine. Could it be because I watched the movie and loved it at a young age? Probably. Could it be because it's one of the first Stephen King books I read? Most definitely! Could it also have to do with seeing a stage adaptation one of my friends was working on when they used a blowtorch instead of a hammer? Oh yes! I love me some real fire on stage! So while this season drew maybe more heavily on 'Salem's Lot then from Misery, I was totally just judging it on the merits of Misery, and they succeeded wonderfully. The success was all down to Lizzy Caplan. I've been a fan of hers ever since Party Down, which means I know her for her comedic chops, and wasn't sure if she could deliver dramatically as Annie Wilkes. Oh, she was perfection. She was a young Kathy Bates while somehow making it her own. Also the background they wrote for the character? Perfection. If future seasons are this good I hope we get many, many more. And not just because I want more answers. Though that would be nice too. 
Sarah Phelps does it again! And no, this isn't a good thing. She's taken amazing source material and altered it to fit her own narrative, and this makes the series not work. What's more it pisses me off. But I can't be entirely mad at this series for one reason, it made me read Tana French's second "Dublin Murder Squad" book, The Likeness, and I adored it. The backstory to this is that prior to the series starting I wanted to read the first book in the series, In the Woods, and was left unimpressed with a hatred of Rob. He's not an unreliable narrator, he's just an ass, OK people? I thought the series was only based on the first book so having finished Rob's story and started the show and after just watching the opening credits I realized, no, it's the first two books. So I stopped watching the series and picked up The Likeness. Fast forward, I've devoured the book and am ready to pick up the series again. Given that these books happen in order for a reason I thought the first half of the season would be Rob's story and the second half would be Cassie's. But no. Sarah Phelps doesn't work like that, Sarah Phelps thinks she's better than the books. Instead they were happening simultaneously, so when Cassie is undercover and should be dealing with the implosion of her and Rob and her abortion and how that mirrors the woman she's impersonating, she's just dealing with finding out she's pregnant, oh and scum because she cheated on her boyfriend in this version. No! This doesn't work. There is supposed to be cause and effect not whatever this is. And again, this is a stellar cast, everyone was so well cast, I can see them as the characters as Tana French wrote them, not as Sarah Phelps did. Can I request a do over with the same cast but a different writer?
One by One by Ruth Ware
The Darkest Tide by Ann Cleeves
Sanctuary by V.V. James
Nobody Knows But You by Anica Mrose Rissi
Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill
The Mimosa Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
A Deception at Thornecrest by Ashley Weaver
The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea
The Man in the High Castle was at one time my favorite series out there. The perfect expansion of the book by Philip K. Dick into a true visual masterpiece. I'm not sure where it fell apart though, but aside from a stellar The Twilight Zone parody this season with Stephen Root as Hawthorne Abendsen, AKA the actual Man in the High Castle, this show felt completely disconnected from previous seasons and laboring on some fantastical notion that the death of John Smith would fix everything. My brother would argue that the production team was so convinced of a season five pickup they were busy plotting towards an epic conclusion that they didn't see the writing on the wall and instead we are left with what we are left with. Yet I don't buy into this theory because even if we were to get more I didn't want that more anymore, if you get my drift. My main problem was that the relationship between Julia Crain and Tagomi was the heart and soul of this show and to not have Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa on AT ALL this season made no sense. To add insult to injury they kill him off in a ham-handed scene with a body double. Tagomi didn't deserve this fate and neither did we! Also where was Ed? Can someone, anyone answer that question? Also don't even get me started on deciding to finally, and belatedly, add more African American characters with the Black Communist Rebellion and not being able to find a balance between the old and the new characters. So in other words, just watch the sensational first three seasons and know that season four is unwatchable. Sometimes it just frustrates me how a show can just destroy itself by losing it's vision. 
When it comes to Agatha Christie adaptations I find they are very hit or miss, especially since the BBC took over the rights back in 2014. There are a few adaptations that I haven't even been able to finish, I'm looking at you Partners in Crime. So it was with trepidation that I went into watching The Pale Horse, mainly because it was adapted by Sarah Phelps, a writer who views herself above the source material. After her stellar adaptation of And Then There Were None she decided to go her own way and force us to watch Toby Jones have sex in The Witness for the Prosecution, made Ordeal by Innocence about cold war fears, turned Poirot priest in The ABC Murders, and now made this very unremarkable adaptation of The Pale Horse that doesn't have anything going for it except a stellar cast left to do nothing. This adaptation tries to lean into the mood versus the meaning, and occasionally it succeeds. There's a very nice Midsommar vibe that could have been worked but instead was almost forgotten. The supernatural element could have been a corker, but again, barely touched on. In fact, of all Sarah Phelps's adaptations this is her biggest fail because it didn't even incite anger in me for some memorable WTF moment, instead it was completely forgettable. I kept wondering while watching it that perhaps it was constrained by the two one hour parts and if it was three parts like most of the other BBC adaptations it might have thrived. But then I realized, I did not want to watch three hours of whatever this was trying to be. 
