I was actually going to say Benjamin January for the first question as well. In general I'm not interested in seeing adaptations of books I really love, but Benjamin January would be an exception, in the right circumstances. The first is that obviously US anti-black racism, slavery, and a lot of trauma relating to these things are at the heart of the series, and it would require careful scriptwriting, direction and showrunning to make sure they are depicted intelligently and sensitively. The second is the specific multilingual context of 1830s New Orleans — the show would need to be cast with actors who were equally comfortable in French and English, and, in the case of Ben (and several others) able to manage fluent Spanish, German, and quotes in Latin and Greek as well.
I also feel that the James Asher series would make a good TV adaptation!
In general, I'm not keen on TV (or film) adaptations of books I really love, and particularly if the first attempt wasn't great, I'm not interested in any further versions. However, I feel with a bigger budget, a better cast, and a bit more care, Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart historical mysteries would do well. It's a series that takes campy Victoriana penny dreadful concepts and plays them straight as mysteries, while infusing them with really perceptive social and political commentary. One thing that I felt really didn't work in the original adaptation was its colourblind casting — while normally this is a worthy aim, in the case of these books race, racism, and its intersection with Victorian colonialism really play a big role, so having non-white actors cast as establishment figures watered down this component of the source material.
For your third question, I'm tempted to say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, even though it was adapted for TV as a BBC miniseries. But it emphatically didn't work! This in part was due to the fact that it needed more episodes — the book is long, and complicated — but also because it is just such a literary work. I don't mean that it's 'high literature' (whatever that is), but that its power as a story is fundamentally linked to its format as a written text, and it loses a lot when translated to the screen.
I also don't think any book whose story involves human characters interacting with the divine should ever be adapted to the screen, because even if it's a cosmology where gods take physical form, I think it's impossible to convey this with human actors without it looking cheap, weird, and unconvincing.
I really enjoyed the adaptations of the Tana French books, but I never read the originals so I have nothing to compare them with!
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I also feel that the James Asher series would make a good TV adaptation!
In general, I'm not keen on TV (or film) adaptations of books I really love, and particularly if the first attempt wasn't great, I'm not interested in any further versions. However, I feel with a bigger budget, a better cast, and a bit more care, Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart historical mysteries would do well. It's a series that takes campy Victoriana penny dreadful concepts and plays them straight as mysteries, while infusing them with really perceptive social and political commentary. One thing that I felt really didn't work in the original adaptation was its colourblind casting — while normally this is a worthy aim, in the case of these books race, racism, and its intersection with Victorian colonialism really play a big role, so having non-white actors cast as establishment figures watered down this component of the source material.
For your third question, I'm tempted to say Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, even though it was adapted for TV as a BBC miniseries. But it emphatically didn't work! This in part was due to the fact that it needed more episodes — the book is long, and complicated — but also because it is just such a literary work. I don't mean that it's 'high literature' (whatever that is), but that its power as a story is fundamentally linked to its format as a written text, and it loses a lot when translated to the screen.
I also don't think any book whose story involves human characters interacting with the divine should ever be adapted to the screen, because even if it's a cosmology where gods take physical form, I think it's impossible to convey this with human actors without it looking cheap, weird, and unconvincing.
I really enjoyed the adaptations of the Tana French books, but I never read the originals so I have nothing to compare them with!