The Alienist
In these days of streaming which allow for bingeing having a series that keeps you literally on the edge of your seat for ten straight weeks instead of ten straight hours is pretty remarkable, and yet that is what The Alienist did. Of course, there were times I was tempted to pick up the book by Caleb Carr to get to the bottom of the crimes taking place in New York in the late 1800s, gruesome and ritualistic murders of young male prostitutes, but at the same time I didn't want to muddy the magnificence of the adaptation by comparing it to it's source material. This show combined so many things that I love into one production, a serial killer with a creepy bent like Jack the Ripper, bringing historical fiction to the small screen, but in a way that is believable because it fits in and around actual history, women breaking out of their expected roles, not to mention the depth of the characters with their own personal secrets that inform who they've become. When each episode ended I wanted the next one right away. This show is so fabulous that I think it might be the only show I've profiled this month that has won a coveted Emmy! When they announced just a few short weeks ago that they are adapting the second book in the series, The Angel of Darkness, I couldn't have been happier. I need Dr. Kreizler, John Moore, Sara Howard, and every single supporting character I've come to love from John's grandmother played by the incomparable Grace Zabriskie to the Isaacson brothers. One can only hope that after The Angel of Darkness they find some way to keep this series going, because I don't want, I need more Dr. Kreizler and associates in my life. Perhaps we can bribe Caleb Carr to write a third and forth installment?
If you're like me you're looking around the world and just thinking WTF. I mean, there's a reason The Handmaid's Tale won all the awards at the Emmys and it's not that it was a fabulous series. There was a reflection of the current state of civil liberties just going out the window. More and more it looks like we have become the backstory of a dystopian tale. So you'd think that reading other dystopian books would be antithesis to what we need at the moment, but you'd be wrong. There's something comforting in seeing that these visionary authors saw it coming. Also, there's that ray of hope that perhaps, if we pull together we can stop it before it's gone too far. We can stop it before Handmaids exist or before The Circle closes or just stop the Nazis, because seriously people, Nazis are never good and at least in this world we defeated them once before. These books give us insight into ourselves and the world around us and have become more and more relevant. Therefore I hope you'll spend some time with me reading a few dystopian classics and seeing what Hollywood made of them. It's time for some dystopian drama. 
Fall. The time of year when thoughts turn to the new TV season while also lauding the past year's work. While I love award shows and the Emmys are certainly a favorite, especially in a year when Stephen Colbert is hosting, it also makes me sad because my favorite shows are considered "genre" television so no matter how amazing the acting or the writing they just never get their plaudits just because they may have vampires. So I decided, I'm going to change that right here, right now. No, I'm not rigging the votes or casting my own statues, but I am going to pick my favorite shows that aired over the last year that just happen to have started out in book form and convince you to give them a chance! Be it science fiction, graphic novels, horror, some of my favorite shows got their start on my bookshelves. So let's hear it for Oz and Fillory and Midnight, Texas, and all the places in between that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences looks down on. Let's hear it for the underdogs, the Ross Poldarks of the world! Here's to who the Emmy should be going to...
