"Unfilmable" genre series

[Noodle Lizard]

I recently re-read the first two Hitchhiker's Guide books and concluded that ... yeah, pretty much unfilmable. Which is strange, given the fact that both the BBC and Disney filmed them.

The BBC one gets far closer than the Disney one did (I found the Disney one offensively bad), but it's still essentially just a very faithful, well-performed presentation of the book(s) for people who either didn't fancy sitting down to read it. Can't imagine it's worth watching unless you're already thoroughly familiar with the book, though.

The fact that the book itself was an adaptation of a format for radio ... I dunno. I haven't quite figured that out yet myself. But reading the books again, I can't imagine anything successfully capturing the abstract banality of Adams' words. I know he was involved in every adaptation we've seen, but aside from a hefty payday, I can't see why he bothered.

[Glebe]

I've often thought that Terry Pratchett's books would never be filmable in a way that do them justice - it's not just what happens it's how they're written. Nothing I've seen if the various adaptations disabuses me of that notion.

Yeah the TV adaptions I've seen are pretty clunky.

[MojoJojo]

The fact that the book itself was an adaptation of a format for radio ... I dunno. I haven't quite figured that out yet myself. But reading the books again, I can't imagine anything successfully capturing the abstract banality of Adams' words. I know he was involved in every adaptation we've seen, but aside from a hefty payday, I can't see why he bothered.

I believe Adam's saw HHGTTG as very much a multimedia franchise, pushing to have it adapted into a comic and a video game when that really wasn't common.

A cynical part of me thinks that was because he found it so hard to actually write that he wanted to make as much as he could from everything he produced. And it is seen as a series of books first nowadays - but I don't think that's what Adam's intended.

[Alberon]

There were a few versions of HHGTTG, the radio series and the LP record version as well as the books and TV series, but it was for radio it was originally devised. I think it worked better as books, though.

Throwaway jokes on the radio like mentioning Zaphod's extra head caused real headaches for the TV version. Even today with a Netflix budget it would cause problems to do it well, but I don't think it's unfilmable.

The BBC's non-CGI book animations are still just about perfect to this day.

[purlieu]

A cynical part of me thinks that was because he found it so hard to actually write that he wanted to make as much as he could from everything he produced.

Oh God absolutely, his two unused Doctor Who scripts formed the third HHGTTG book and the first Dirk Gently one. He didn't really do that much else beyond those. What he did create was largely astonishingly good, but it's a pretty small catalogue.

The book version of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe has a genuinely unfilmable section with Zaphod.