Adaptational Distillation in Live-Action TV.
Shows with their own pages
- Avatar: The Last Airbender had the task of adapting a 20-episode animated series into a 8-episode live-action series, resulting in plot points and character motivations being mashed up, changed, or eliminated entirely. General consensus is that it, while not perfect, at the very least managed to stay true to the spirit of the original series. It is also clear that the executives understood the gist of the cartoon, making it far superior to the derided feature film adaptation (which had the even trickier challenge of compressing the 20 episodes into a 103-minute film, a task that failed because decisions fell to executives who neither understood nor cared enough about the series in the first place).
- The J-Drama form of Boys over Flowers managed to compress thirty-six volumes of manga written over a period of eleven years into a much smoother story, combining characters and editing plot arcs as necessary.
- The Chosen: Rare, considering all the Adaptation Expansion that is taking place in order to fill out a full series from the source material. However, a few events that took place twice in the Gospels are rolled into one for the show.
- In a field on the outskirts of Decapolis, Jesus feeds 5,000 men (not counting women and children) after two days of nonstop teaching by multiplying a young lad's five loaves and two fish. In the first recorded incident this actually happens at the end of the day near the town of Bethsaida, while the second incident involves different quantities of people and food but occurs after Jesus preaches for three whole days around Decapolis, the place where He also heals the deaf and mute man.
- When Jesus arrives on the boat after walking on the water, He then calms the storm with a command. In scripture, these are two separate incidents. (Jesus was in the boat all along when He stills the tempest.)
- The 1981 television adaptation of The Day of the Triffids crammed a whole novel into six 30-minute episodes by the simple expedient of cutting all the Padding, and was frankly the better for it.
- Discworld:
- The miniseries version of Hogfather and The Colour of Magic managed to retain most of the good material from the original novel, though it was apparently hard to follow for those who hadn't read the books, as it assumed you already knew most of the backstory. In this case, the distillation is probably because Terry Prachett was heavily involved in both productions, even having cameo appearances in the last scenes of Hogfather and the first of Colour.
- The Patrician is based on his later appearances (including Wuffles), instead of his eventually rather contradictory appearance in the actual early books. The "Machiavellian Vampire Flamingo" Vetinari was introduced approximately at the same time as the name "Vetinari".
- The eponymous hero of The Flash (1990) was an amalgamation of the Silver Age and Post-Crisis Flashes in the comics. While his secret identity was that of Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, some aspects of the character (like his relationship with scientist Dr. Tina McGee and his need to eat insane amounts of food to maintain his powers) were incorporated from the character of the later Flash, Wally West.
- The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries cuts most of The Hardy Boys book series' supporting cast. The Hardys' mother, Laura, is dead, and the boys live with their widowed father and Aunt Gertrude, and the only friends from the books that show up are Callie Shaw and Chet Morton — and Chet, only in two episodes. In second season, the series is distilled even more, with even Aunt Gertrude and Callie getting cut.
- The made-for-TV Hercules condenses his early life and heroic feats by reducing his famous Twelve Labours to just six, combines several characters associated with his legend such as his mother Alcemene, who is combined with Hera and becomes a Evil Matriarch devoted to destroy him.
- Home Movie: The Princess Bride is a comedic adaptation of the classic 1987 film The Princess Bride. Being ostensibly aimed at an audience familiar with the original, a few scenes deemed unnecessary for that audience were cut to meet Quibi's time limits, such as the scene where Westley explains to Buttercup how he became the Dread Pirate Roberts.
- The first episode of the Horatio Hornblower television series uses events from five of the Mr. Midshipman Hornblower stories, but the events from "The Penalty of Failure" are reduced because it probably would have taken up the rest of the episode had it been adapted straight since it involved a second ship and Hornblower setting that ship on fire. Instead, Hornblower's cunning is in preparing for the French crew's takeover of the lifeboat after the Marie Galante sinks by plotting a false chart and disposing of the compass over the side. The "Penalty of Failure" is retained when he declines to explain this to Pellew, instead letting him think the French captain was bad at navigation. This retained Hornblower's self-inflicted punishment over the loss of the prize vessel, just as in the book, where he let Pellew think that the French privateer caught fire by chance.
- The Incredible Hulk (1977): A very loose adaptation of the Marvel Comics character. The comics' supporting characters and villains are left out and only once during the series did the Hulk battle another superhuman character. Also, for the majority of the series, the only sci-fi or fantasy elements were the Hulk himself. With the exception of two TV movies, the rest of the Marvel Universe wasn't even referenced and the name Hulk was rarely used onscreen to refer to Banner's alter ego. The format for the show was a loose adaptation of Les Misérables with David Banner as Jean Valjean and Jack McGee as Inspector Javert. Comparisons to the Kung Fu (1972) TV series are also common with Banner as Kwai Chang Caine as is Richard Kimble of The Fugitive. The show focused on character drama instead of deliberate superhero-style adventure.
- Les Revenants (Rebound as titled in English) is based on a 2004 zombie movie that had a lot more people resurrecting. In the series, there are only five "Revenants", mostly to get a better assessment of their predicament. The movie also didn't provide any explanation for these unexpected resurrections, which the series plans to do eventually.
- The Magicians (2016): In the first book of the trilogy that the show is based on, the entrance exam had a long section devoted to it. Here it's compressed to just showing us that the writing on the exam paper frequently alters, and Quentin passes while Julia doesn't.
- In comparison to the original Korean version, the U.S. adaptation of The Masked Singer switched to a season-based competition more in line with other music competitions (unlike the Korean version, where two new performers compete weekly to duel against a returning champion), and places a stronger focus on the aspect of trying to guess the identities of the performers based on clues.
- The US game show Minute to Win It spun off versions in Australia and the Netherlands version, both of which manage to cram twice as much gameplay into the same hour (which also fixes the numerous pacing problems of the original) by gutting out all the Padding, Filler, reminding the viewers of what just happened three minutes earlier, and Commercial Break Cliffhangers. The British version pretty much threw out everything but the games themselves, changing it to a team competition format (also averting similarities to The Cube).
- The Nobuta Wo Produce J-drama was based on a book whose title character was an overweight, unattractive boy, and the main character was a cold-hearted Jerkass who only wanted to produce Nobuta because he was bored. In the drama, Nobuta was a lovable Woobie girl who wasn't even capable of smiling properly, Shuji was misguided and selfish rather than a cold jerk, and the character of Akira was introduced. The resulting drama had an ending that was not saddening as the book, had beautiful cinematography, and mind-blowing plot and characterization.
- Oobi stars bare hand puppets who speak in simplified sentences. It's known for and often defined by its simplicity, but the Iranian adaptation of it (Dasdasi) managed to be even simpler by getting rid of every supporting character and focusing solely on the main family of puppets.
- The Granada Television series Sherlock Holmes runs the spectrum from stringently faithful to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originals, to barely resembling the stories they are based on.
- An example of the former is the The Sign of Four which is about as perfect an adaptation as fans of Sherlock Holmes could ask for.
- An example of the latter is The Last Vampyre, based very (very!) loosely on the short story The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.
- In the original story, a young boy coldly and calculatedly attempts to murder his infant step brother with a poison dart to the neck. The mother saves the infant's life by sucking the poison out, which prompts the father, unaware of the attempted murder, to appeal to Sherlock Holmes based on the false impression that his wife must think she's a vampire. It's a relatively straightforward detective story with Holmes piecing together a variety of clues until he arrives at the truth.
- In the Granada adaptation, the young boy himself begins to think he's a vampire after becoming friends with a man who appears to be under the same delusion; the infant brother dies of natural causes, but the event is inexplicably blamed on the supernatural; even Holmes, at one point, tells an astonished Watson that he's seen a ghost, though it's later revealed to be a trick of the light; and the boy assaults a maid with a poison dart to the neck which the mother sucks out to save the maid's life. The story concludes with the delusional boy, who apparently thinks he can fly, jumping off the roof of an abandoned house and falling to his death. In short, the Granada version has almost nothing in common with the story it is based on.
- Smallville takes several cues from the Silver Age (friendship with Lex, Clark having a sort of heroic career while in high school, supporting cast getting powers every other week) as well as Post-Crisis (Clark playing football, Clark getting his powers on the on-set of puberty) and the films (Several Mythology Gags).
- Stargirl (2020) massively streamlines Courtney's backstory in the comics by conflating Jack (Starman) Knight and Sylvester (Star-Spangled Kid/Skyman) Pemberton. Instead of finding the Cosmic Converter Belt Ted Knight made for Sylvester, and much later being given the Cosmic Staff by Jack (at which point she changed her own identity from Star-Spangled Kid II to Stargirl), Courtney finds the Cosmic Staff Ted made for Sylvester, who in his later career went by Starman, and calls herself Stargirl from the beginning. Courtney's Blue Valley adventures are also combined with her JSA career, with other second-generation JSA members (actually Infinity Inc rather than the one she joined) as kids attending Blue Valley High, and the Injustice Society as the sinister power behind the town.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "The Jungle", Charles Beaumont greatly distilled his own short story by turning the lengthy sections in which Richard Austin is cursed into the equivalent character Alan Richards' Backstory in the television adaptation. This comes as a result of the relocation of the action from Africa to New York City.
- The Vampire Diaries: Bonnie in the TV series is a combination of the book version of Bonnie and Meredith; Meredith's traits are folded into Bonnie and bitchy Caroline takes Meredith's place in the trio.
- The Wheel of Time (2021):
- In the books the Taint gives channelers two problems: insanity and "rotting alive". There's no telling how and when the insanity would manifest and if the rot starts and even kills the victim earlier. Here, insanity is the only problem mentioned so far and it is said to always make the channeler kill his loved ones.
- The capture of Logain, albeit offscreen, went completely differently. In the books it was a large battle that involved armies of several states: Andor, Cairhien, Tear, Illian... Here it was more of a stealth mission: Red sisters sneaked into his camp, disabled him and scared his followers away with lightning bolts. The attempt to liberate him did not involve as many people either — about a dozen Aes Sedai, about as many Warders, against several scores of Logain supporters.
- In the first book the warning about the Eye of the World went long and convoluted ways to reach the heroes.note Here, Siuan Sache says that she keeps seeing a dream that the Dark One is weak, barely clinging to his power, but steadily recovering at the Eye of the World. And the obvious solution is to send the probable Dragon Reborn to kill him there.
- Machin Shin, "the black wind" of the Ways, is simply a cold wind attracted by channeling, that feasts on travellers' souls by giving each one a personified "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Nynaeve proves strong enough to stop it with a Saidar shield. Moiraine either didn't know it was possible or did not bother trying.
- The White Queen: Three novels (specifically The White Queen, The Red Queen and The Kingmaker's Daughter) and 21 years of events are squeezed into a 10-episode miniseries.
- Wonder Woman (1975) simplified the comics. None of Wonder Woman's supervillains ever appeared, for example, though some of her Nazi opponents did. Etta Candy was demoted from leading literal charges - and winning - against various bad guys to complaining about photographers stiffing her for $1.50.
