Broadcast Magazine reports that author Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks is coming to television…in two-hour movie for the UK's ITV network from Left Bank Pictures, the same folks responsible for the fine WALLANDER series. The first book to be filmed, which will serve as a pilot for more, will be AFTERMATH. Meanwhile, the same company is producing three movies based on Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen novels RATKING, VENDETTA, and DEAD LAGOON for the BBC…as well as a second season of WALLANDER tales.
That does annoy me. I’m looking forward to seeing the Insepctor Banks stories brought to the screen, but why do they have to use Aftermath as the pilot, when there are at least 10 books preceding it?
It does annoy me when they don’t follow the chronological order.
Rant ends!!
Well, one reason a TV series of this kind does not start with the first book is that sometimes the first book is weak, or at least not as good as what follows. It often takes a series awhile to hit its stride. TV series want to make as strong an impression as possible at the beginning, so as to get viewers hooked, and so they will want the strongest material available.
Also, sometimes the TV version start with the most recent book because it IS the most recent, and thus the one viewers are most likely to have heard of. An example of this–an obscure example, I suppose–is the Lew Archer TV series; its pilot was an adaptation of THE UNDERGROUND MAN, the sixteenth novel but the most recent and the best-selling to that time.