Last year, I looked at some movie-to-TV adaptations that didn't quite work. We've all erased 2023's True Lies and Fatal Attraction series from memory, I presume. This time around, I'm highlighting some that not only worked but also surpassed the original film, and most of them premiered just within the last 12 months. (It's worth noting that none of these are from Paramount+, the Temu of streaming knockoffs.)
TED (2024; PEACOCK)
Seth MacFarlane's Ted (2012) deftly sold the comic story of a foul-mouthed teddy bear come to life, but Ted 2 (2015) flopped. Ted the series sidesteps that fail by going back to John's ( Max Burkholder as a teen Mark Wahlberg) 1990s high school days with Ted (voiced by MacFarlane). Between the over-the-top Boston accents, '90s pop-cultural stingers, and the absence of Wahlberg, the prequel is actually better than the original movie. So is the supporting cast: Alanna Ubach, Scott Grimes, and Giorgia Whigham flesh out Ted delightfully.
FARGO (2014-2023; HULU)
Specifically, the recent fifth season of Fargo starring Jon Hamm and Juno Temple — whoa. Noah Hawley's anthology series has been hit-and-miss since season 1 (the pitfall of a perfect debut), but 2023's comeback tale was as funny, terrifying and measured as TV or movies can dream to be. Christo-psycho Sheriff Roy's (Hamm) dogged pursuit of "housewife" Dot (Temple) is wildly unpredictable from episode to episode, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Dave Foley providing hysterically arch reinforcement along the way.
DEAD RINGERS (2023; PRIME VIDEO)
If Emmy awards meant anything, Rachel Weisz would have won them all for her dual role in the gender-flipped Dead Ringers, a miniseries that topped the original 1988 movie. Twin OB-GYNs Beverly and Elliot Mantle (both Weisz) are dedicated to furthering the science of fertility and childbirth but from different angles: Compassionate Beverly wants to make the process easier for her patients, while the audacious Elliot would rather just burn the system down. Dead Ringers is a tense but rewarding watch... if you're cool with blood.
SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF (2023; NETFLIX)
The animated Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an adaptation of both the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and the 2010 cult-classic movie, which is probably more Scott Pilgrim than most normies can handle. Crucially, Takes Off wrangled all of the film's actors to voice the series: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman, Alison Pill, Brie Larson, Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, and Ellen Wong. Even more crucially, the series deviates from the previously established stories.
A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN (2022; PRIME)
Broad City's Abbi Jacobson reimagined the 1992 movie A League of Their Own as a more inclusive and topical (for 1943 and now) eight-episode series; Prime Video eventually reimagined it as canceled. The rise of pro women's baseball team the Rockford Peaches gets equal time alongside multiple personal stories in this setting, which also takes the faintly gay subtext of the movie and blows it up into full-on supertext. A League of Their Own works effortlessly as a comedy, a drama and a sports time capsule.
IRMA VEP (2022; MAX)
French director Olivier Assayas remade his own 1996 movie Irma Vep into an eight-episode miniseries for HBO, which itself chronicles the shooting of a TV remake of a silent French film, Les Vampires — follow? American actress Mira Harberg ( Alicia Vikander) has been cast as Les Vampires lead Irma Vep, and soon finds her life and her vampiric role blending into one. Irma Vep's dark, restless dreamscape is balanced with comic relief from characters like Zelda ( Carrie Brownstein), Mira's agent who'd rather she just do a Marvel movie than French art-house fare (so meta).
LA FEMME NIKITA, NIKITA (1997-2001, 2010-2013; ROKU CHANNEL, TUBI)
These go further back, but they're worth seeking out. After Luc Besson's 1990 French film La Femme Nikita, about a teen criminal-turned-assassin, and 1993's Americanized clone Point of No Return, the premise seemed drained. Then came La Femme Nikita in 1997, an icy Canadian TV series that became U.S. cable's hottest property and made Aussie Peta Wilson a star overnight. The deadly-serious drama inspired The CW's Nikita in 2010, which introduced Maggie Q, more humor, and occasional blinking. ♦
