Book vs. Screen: The Best and Worst of Book-to-TV Adaptations

From Game of Thrones to Outlander, each year we see some of our favourite books adapted for our home screens – this year alone, there are several new small screen adaptations of books being released for our viewing pleasure.

With this in mind, the experts at Aura Print have analysed over 66 million Goodreads book ratings and over 7 million IMDb series ratings to rank the BEST and WORST book-to-TV adaptations of the past 10 years.

Data found that of TV adaptations in the past decade, 63% are considered WORSE than the books they are based on. 

The TV shows that saw the biggest drop in quality from the books they are based on (of the past 10 years)

Rank	TV show	Book it is based on	Goodreads book / book series rating (/10)	IMDb show rating (/10)	Quality points dropped
1	The Witcher: Blood Origin	The Witcher (series)	8.3	4.7	3.6
2	The Stand	The Stand	8.7	5.6	3.1
3	The Mist	The Mist	7.9	5.4	2.5
=4	Shadowhunters	The Mortal Instruments (series)	8.3	6.5	1.8
=4	The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power	Middle-Earth & the Lord of the Rings (series)	8.7	6.9	1.8

*An ‘=’ indicates a joint ranking

The TV show that saw the biggest drop in quality from the book is The Witcher: Blood Origin. The original Witcher show from 2019, based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s famous fantasy book series, was a big hit and boasts a rating of 8.1 out of 10 on IMDb. The same can’t be said for spin-off miniseries Blood Origin, however, which currently holds a rating of only 4.7. When compared to the books’ average Goodreads rating of 8.3 out of 10, this translates to a quality drop of 3.6 marks.

Taking second place is The Stand. Based on Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel from 1978, the miniseries was appropriately released at the height of the pandemic in 2020. The original book is a beloved epic that boasts a rating of 8.7 out of 10 on Goodreads. The show struggled to adapt such a dense story onto the small screen, and holds an IMDb rating of just 5.6 out of 10 – a drop in quality of 3.1 marks.

Unfortunately for Stephen King fans, the third spot on the table is taken up by another one of his works, The Mist. The original 1980 novella, about a town trapped within a monstrous fog, has a rating of 7.9 out of 10 on Goodreads and is well-remembered for its unsettling horror. The TV adaptation from 2017, however, has already been largely forgotten. It has a rating of 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb – a drop in quality of 2.5 marks.

The final spot on the table is shared by two shows. 2016’s supernatural drama Shadowhunters holds a rating of 6.5 out of 10 on IMDb. The book series it is based on, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments, fares much better – with an average mark of 8.3 out of 10 on Goodreads. 

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the much-anticipated small screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved fantasy stories, holds an IMDb rating of 6.9. Compared to the books’ average rating of 8.7, this is quite a disappointing result. Both of these shows see a drop in quality of 1.8 marks when compared with the books. 

Though the majority of TV adaptations in the past decade are considered worse than the books they are based on, 33% are actually seen as BETTER.

The TV shows that saw the biggest rise in quality from the books they are based on (of the past 10 years)

Rank	TV show	Book it is based on	Goodreads book / book series rating (/10)	IMDb show rating (/10)	Quality points earned
1	The Leftovers	The Leftovers	6.8	8.3	1.5
=2	Killing Eve	Codename Villanelle (series)	7.1	8.1	1.0
=2	The Haunting of Hill House	The Haunting of Hill House	7.6	8.6	1.0
4	Normal People	Normal People	7.6	8.4	0.8
=5	Masters of Sex	Masters of Sex	7.2	7.9	0.7
=5	Orange is the New Black	Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison	7.4	8.1	0.7
=5	The Man in the High Castle	The Man in the High Castle	7.2	7.9	0.7

*An ‘=’ indicates a joint ranking

The TV show that proved to be the biggest improvement upon its original source material is 2014’s The Leftovers, based on Tom Perrotta’s 2011 novel of the same name. Whilst Perrotta’s dystopian novel holds a Goodreads rating of 6.8 out of 10, the series boasts an 8.3 rating on IMDb – this translates to a quality increase of 1.5 marks, or just over 22%.

In second place is a tie between two shows from 2018. Luke Jennings’ Codename Villanelle book series holds an average Goodreads rating of 7.1 out of 10 out of 10. Its TV show adaptation, Killing Eve, has an IMDb rating of 8.1 out of 10. 

A similar jump in quality can be found in 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House, adapted from Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of the same name. The show has an impressive IMDb rating of 8.6 out of 10, as opposed to the book’s Goodreads rating of 7.6. In both cases, the TV show adaptation saw a jump in quality from the original book by one full mark.

Other notable findings:

• Aura Print also found the weighted score for all adaptations in the dataset, based on their rating and how many reviews they received. 
• The best TV show adapted from a book in the past 10 years is The Queen’s Gambit. With an IMDb rating of 8.6 based on a whopping 487,000 reviews, it ranks as the best show on our list, with a final score of 9.62 out of 10.
• The worst TV show adapted from a book in the past 10 years is I Love Dick. With an IMDb rating of 6.3 based on only 4,700 reviews, it ranks as the worst on our list, with a final score of 0.44 out of 10.

Credit to https://aura-print.com/uk/ who commissioned the data.