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Witches and Vampires
Finished watching Season Three of "A Discovery of Witches" two weeks ago, and went back to re-read the books to see where and why things differ.
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OK, with that behind us...
I'm still really impressed with Harkness's world-building, and she's given us a bunch of engaging and interesting characters. But a lot of what happens in the books comes from the narrator. In converting the books to screenplays, where having that much "narrator voice-over" would feel preachy and artificial, they substantially improved the dialogue.
In particular, the Marcus-Phoebe arc is much more developed, much more believable, and much less creepy in the TV series than in the book. Book Marcus is sort of a jerk, and gives no reason for Phoebe to be attracted to him at all except that he's decided she will be. And you never see how that happens: the book jumps from her wondering why she didn't kick him out of her office faster to both of them sharing a bedroom at his mother's place. TV Marcus is less arrogant, more considerate, more of an over-enthusiastic puppy dog, and there's enough time to see them plausibly get together; he comes out to her as a vampire, she doesn't believe him until she does, she agrees to meet his family... all in all much more satisfying.
Speaking of abrupt jumps, the book jumps from Peter Knox planning to visit Sept-Tours to Sarah mourning Emily's death, about which we only hear a few details later in flashback. That can be an effective technique, and I could see it making sense if it were the order in which a particular character learned things, but both of the scenes in question are from the omniscient-observer viewpoint, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves here. In the TV series, we see Gerbert visit Sept-Tours and confront Ysabeau, we see Emily become increasingly obsessed with summoning the dead, we see Knox visit Sept-Tours and confront Emily and Marcus, killing one and knocking the other unconscious, and then things start to feel unreal and disconnected, as they would for the characters.
The biggest plot change in Book Two/Season Two is combining two separate long voyages (to Sept-Tours and to Prague) into one with an unplanned side trip. This forces a bunch of other changes: since they need to be in London and meet Goody Alsop before the voyage, they time-walk directly to London rather than to Matthew's place in Woodstock (as in the book). And at the end of their Elizabethan sojourn, the book has them return to an empty house in Madison and then take several stops to Sept-Tours, while the TV series (I guess in the interest of simplicity) has them return directly to a very full Sept-Tours.
In Book Three/Season Three, a supportive coven in Madison is merged into a supportive coven in London, which I guess makes sense if the writers want to reduce the amount of trans-Atlantic commuting. It makes less sense that Diana's best friend Chris, from her years at Yale, is now at a research lab in London too (and that we heard little or nothing about him in Season One, despite him being a "best friend" and only an hour or two away). In the book, Chris seeks and finds Diana in Madison rather than Diana seeking and finding him in London.
There's more hostility, more testosterone-poisoning, in the books than in the TV series. In particular, Nathaniel and Matthew are oil and water at first meeting, for no obvious reason, and Chris punches Matthew in the jaw shortly after meeting him, again for no obvious reason -- this is Diana's husband, so it would be reasonable to assume he cares about her welfare at least as much as Chris does, and he hasn't just done anything to invalidate that assumption.
Of course, there are lots of details in the books that I wish had made it into the TV series. There could easily have been an exchange "Are we expecting guests?" "No, why?" "Because the house just grew another bedroom." And in Book Three there's a conversation among a bunch of witches in a grocery store that would have been fun to see.
I'd better wrap this up (while reserving the right to add things to it as they occur to me). In a nutshell, the TV series inevitably simplifies a lot of plot points, but in many ways -- particularly dialogue -- it actually improves on the books.
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OK, with that behind us...
I'm still really impressed with Harkness's world-building, and she's given us a bunch of engaging and interesting characters. But a lot of what happens in the books comes from the narrator. In converting the books to screenplays, where having that much "narrator voice-over" would feel preachy and artificial, they substantially improved the dialogue.
In particular, the Marcus-Phoebe arc is much more developed, much more believable, and much less creepy in the TV series than in the book. Book Marcus is sort of a jerk, and gives no reason for Phoebe to be attracted to him at all except that he's decided she will be. And you never see how that happens: the book jumps from her wondering why she didn't kick him out of her office faster to both of them sharing a bedroom at his mother's place. TV Marcus is less arrogant, more considerate, more of an over-enthusiastic puppy dog, and there's enough time to see them plausibly get together; he comes out to her as a vampire, she doesn't believe him until she does, she agrees to meet his family... all in all much more satisfying.
Speaking of abrupt jumps, the book jumps from Peter Knox planning to visit Sept-Tours to Sarah mourning Emily's death, about which we only hear a few details later in flashback. That can be an effective technique, and I could see it making sense if it were the order in which a particular character learned things, but both of the scenes in question are from the omniscient-observer viewpoint, so I'm not sure what purpose it serves here. In the TV series, we see Gerbert visit Sept-Tours and confront Ysabeau, we see Emily become increasingly obsessed with summoning the dead, we see Knox visit Sept-Tours and confront Emily and Marcus, killing one and knocking the other unconscious, and then things start to feel unreal and disconnected, as they would for the characters.
The biggest plot change in Book Two/Season Two is combining two separate long voyages (to Sept-Tours and to Prague) into one with an unplanned side trip. This forces a bunch of other changes: since they need to be in London and meet Goody Alsop before the voyage, they time-walk directly to London rather than to Matthew's place in Woodstock (as in the book). And at the end of their Elizabethan sojourn, the book has them return to an empty house in Madison and then take several stops to Sept-Tours, while the TV series (I guess in the interest of simplicity) has them return directly to a very full Sept-Tours.
In Book Three/Season Three, a supportive coven in Madison is merged into a supportive coven in London, which I guess makes sense if the writers want to reduce the amount of trans-Atlantic commuting. It makes less sense that Diana's best friend Chris, from her years at Yale, is now at a research lab in London too (and that we heard little or nothing about him in Season One, despite him being a "best friend" and only an hour or two away). In the book, Chris seeks and finds Diana in Madison rather than Diana seeking and finding him in London.
There's more hostility, more testosterone-poisoning, in the books than in the TV series. In particular, Nathaniel and Matthew are oil and water at first meeting, for no obvious reason, and Chris punches Matthew in the jaw shortly after meeting him, again for no obvious reason -- this is Diana's husband, so it would be reasonable to assume he cares about her welfare at least as much as Chris does, and he hasn't just done anything to invalidate that assumption.
Of course, there are lots of details in the books that I wish had made it into the TV series. There could easily have been an exchange "Are we expecting guests?" "No, why?" "Because the house just grew another bedroom." And in Book Three there's a conversation among a bunch of witches in a grocery store that would have been fun to see.
I'd better wrap this up (while reserving the right to add things to it as they occur to me). In a nutshell, the TV series inevitably simplifies a lot of plot points, but in many ways -- particularly dialogue -- it actually improves on the books.
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And I'm not surprised that they reduced the number of characters for simplicity; that's standard operating procedure for converting a book to a screenplay. The first example of this that I noticed, as a child, was "101 Dalmatians" combining the characters of Missus and Perdita into one, which feels sorta kinky from the book's perspective. In TV "Discovery", Hancock is merged with Gallowglass (simplicity), Verin and Ernst disappear completely (simplicity), there's no further investigation of the Voynich ms (which IRL lives at Yale, and they had already moved that part of the plot to London), and none of Chris's students have names (much less are any of them daemons or vampires).
Corra, of course, wouldn't have been a Covid problem, but she does show up much more frequently in Book Three than in Season Three, and I'm not sure why -- I guess the writers thought she wasn't necessary to any of the relevant scenes.
I suspect some of the positive differences are the result of having more people in the room saying "does this line/action make sense?"
I'm only about 40% through Book Three at the moment; I'll watch for more interesting differences.