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INSTRUCTIONS:

It’s simple: for every match-up, pick your favorite. We’re looking for the best show, not necessarily the most faithful adaptation—though that may factor into your thinking. Or not! In short, go with your gut. We’ll tabulate up the results using our best liberal arts major math, and bring you the results tomorrow.

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VOTING SCHEDULE:

Round of 64: Voting open Monday, November 9th from 10:00 AM until at 7:00 PM EST (Results are here)

Round of 32: Voting open Tuesday, November 10th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST (Results are here)

➤ Round of 16: Voting open now until 7:00 PM EST

Quarterfinals: Voting open Thursday, November 12th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST

Semifinals: Voting open Friday, November 13th from 10:00 AM, until Sunday November 15th at 7:00 PM EST

The Finals: Voting open Monday, November 16th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST

And the winner will be announced on Tuesday, November 17th!

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HOW TO VOTE:

There are little voting forms at the bottom of each match-up. Simply click and move along, like changing the channel on your TV.

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MATCHUP:

Game of Thrones (1) vs. Roots (4)

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Game of Thrones (2011)

Emotional manipulation, with dragons

Based on: George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (1996–…)

Subgenres: Everyone Dies • The Last Stand of Monoculture • Water Cooler Fodder

 

David Benioff and D. B. Weiss changed the game with their adaptation of George R.R. (for Really Really Slow At Finishing the Next Book) Martin’s already popular books, bringing the swords, dragons, morally complex characters, and unrepentant violence to life with big budget visuals and great performances. The books’ soap-opera-dense political intrigue and “kill ‘em all” approach to character development felt remarkably fresh in 2011—you never knew who was going to die, or have sex!—and it’s hard to overstate the show’s popularity: For years of Sundays, everyone you knew was going to a Game of Thrones watch party. Some of the shine came off when the show’s plot outran the books—and the writers couldn’t stick the landing—but when there are real children in the real world named Daenerys, it’s hard to deny the GoT legacy. –JF

Put it on when you want to feel better about your office’s politics.

See also:

How I Built My Own Game of Thrones Iron Throne • The 50 Best Fictional Dragons, Ranked • In Praise of Remixing Shakespeare

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Roots (1977)

A very American family saga

Based on: Alex Haley’s Roots (1976)

Subgenres: Classroom Classics • It Did Happen Here • Generational Stories

 

One of the most watched miniseries in American TV history and a seminal dramatic portrayal of America through slavery and the Civil War. The show almost got pulled when ABC executives saw how unflinching Roots was about the brutality of slavers, especially when they were being portrayed by some of TV’s most recognizable white faces. The network insisted on adding a concerned white captain who isn’t in the book. Haley’s novel was known for being the first popular work of fiction to present the horrors of the Middle Passage, which the show maintains. Some of the novel’s nuance is lost in the translation to TV, but Roots is excellent and anchored in great performances, including an early performance by LeVar Burton. –JF

Put it on when you want to remember when network TV executives made serious shows.

See also:

How the TV Adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots Sparked a Cultural Awakening • Nikki Giovanni on Race, Hope, Fatherhood, and Roots

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MATCHUP:

Say Nothing (6) vs. Slow Horses (2)

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Say Nothing (2024)

Revolution retold

Based on: Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing (2018)

Subgenres: Based on a True Story • Fight for Your Rights • Party Politics

 

Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent book was my first introduction to both the Troubles and its cast of determined revolutionaries. Keefe’s project, centering on the mysterious disappearance of civilian Jean McConville in 1972, explored a centuries-long occupation through the eyes of a few key players. Josh Zetumer’s adaptation also managed to render the political personal, but this viewer admired how the show’s structure left space for thematic exploration.

Drifting from the tight focus on I.R.A. icon Dolours Price gives the series air to float big questions. So on the one hand, we have Lola Petticrew eating up scenery as moxie incarnate, but on the other, we have meaty arguments on statecraft, paramilitary strategy, and political atonement.

I also felt, watching this show, how alive the conflict is. And how unsettled! Say Nothing framed every single one of its nine episodes with a winky chyron noting Gerry Adams’ denial that he was ever a member of the I.R.A. Maybe the revolution will not be televised because the past isn’t even past. –BKA

Put it on when you want to topple the system in a cool sweater.

See also:

Patrick Radden Keefe on Secrets, Lies, and the Murky Line Between Licit and Illicit

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Slow Horses (2022)

Gary Oldman zinger vehicle

Based on: Mick Herron’s Slough House novels (2010–2025)

Subgenres: Losers • Our Peerless Leader • Highbrow Fart Jokes • Elevated Espionage

 

It’s a brilliant premise: a group of MI5 agents, all of whom have made career-ruining mistakes of one kind or another, are relegated to a department entitled Slough House, where they are made to do menial labor to avoid being completely left out in the cold. Their fearless leader is the relentlessly disgusting, but equally brilliant Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) who insults, cajoles, and gaslights his foot-dragging staff into feats of daring heroism. It is exciting in all the normal ways that a good spy drama can be, but unlike many of its kind, it is very, very funny, balancing mordant wit, slapstick, and, let’s face it, highly amusing Britishisms. Plus, Kristin Scott Thomas always hits. –ET

Put it on when you are really good at failing.

See also:

Slow Horses, Starring Gary Oldman, is Worth the Slow Burn

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MATCHUP:

Killing Eve (9) vs. Interview with the Vampire (12)

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Killing Eve (2018)

What’s a little assassination between two consenting adults?

Based on: Luke Jennings’s Codename Villanelle (2017)

Subgenres: The Thrill of the Chase • Recreational Murder • Tension

 

The heart of Killing Eve is of course the mutual obsession between assassin Villanelle and her hunter, Eve Polastri. Comer’s Villanelle is volatile and ruthless, which is to say she’s a lot of fun, and while Eve might appear more grounded on the surface, the two women are (in the most complimentary way possible) perfectly matched freaks. Phoebe Waller-Bridge served as the show’s head writer during the first season of this sharp, sexy cat and mouse game, then Emerald Fennel in season two; fans remained divided over later seasons, particularly the show’s ending, but that’s okay. We’ll always have the kitchen scene. –OS

Put it on when you need to live vicariously through fiction instead of staying at home with your cat.

See also:

Serial Killer As Instagram Influencer? On Killing Eve‘s Cool Girl Assassin • The Visible and Invisible Women of Killing Eve • Subverting the Male Gaze in Killing Eve

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Interview with the Vampire (2022)

Even Anne Rice can’t sue from beyond the grave

Based on: Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1991)

Subgenres: Toxic Yaoi • Tom Cruise Wishes • Does This Count As Romantasy?

 

All of my gayest and most insane friends are obsessed with Interview with the Vampire, which is how you know it’s awesome. The show follows the plot of the book but, since Anne Rice is now dead and can’t get litigious about it, the two central vampires (Louis and Lestat) can finally be openly gay. This is what gives this show its extra sauce: the fact that Louis and Lestat can have hate sex and play evil mind games with each other as they fall in love. It’s an adaptation that dares to ask: Did we make these characters psychotic enough the first time around? Is there anything we can do to bump up the crazy factor? Can we turn that dial to 11? –MC

Put it on when you need to look at hot men in high-waisted pants.

See also:

Leigh Bardugo on 50 Years of Interview with the Vampire and the Immortality of Anne Rice’s Lestat

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MATCHUP:

Normal People (3) vs. Orange is the New Black (2)

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Normal People (2020)

Sex, Angst, Sligo

Based on: Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018)

Subgenres: What Happens in Sligo • Connell’s Gold Chain • Faithful Adaptations

 

Rare is it that an adaptation is neither better nor worse than its source material, but rather, despite covering the same ground, an ideal companion piece. Lenny Abrahamson’s Normal People is deeply faithful to Rooney’s breakout novel, while also delivering a visual mood that expands on the book. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal are both excellent, bringing a convincing vulnerability to the screen. Also the sex is pretty damn good! –ET

Put it on when you miss having strong emotions.

See also:

Watching Normal People Have Very Good Sex (on the Small Screen) • Lenny Abrahamson on Adapting Sally Rooney’s Normal People for TV • Dispatches from an extra on the set of Hulu’s Normal People. • Read Sally Rooney’s first short story about Marianne and Connell.

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Orange is the New Black (2013)

A show where they mostly wore khaki

Based on: Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison (2010)

Subgenres: Worst Places to See Your Ex • The Prison Industrial Complex is Evil • Cosplay Ideas for Large Groups

 

Being incarcerated alongside the ex who sent you to prison isn’t just a cruel joke of the universe: It actually happened to Piper Kerman, who transported dirty money on exactly one occasion for her former girlfriend, drug smuggler Alex Vause. Thank goodness she wrote a memoir about it, so it could become this show. Orange Is The New Black’s humor, heart, and earnest examination of the American prison system made it one of the earliest hits of the streaming era, and as its scope expanded from Piper to focus on its sprawling ensemble cast, its saturation only increased. Everyone watched this show. Your mom. Your co-worker. The worst guy you know probably had a (very bad) opinion about one of the most controversial character deaths of the time. –OS

Put it on when you definitely want to laugh (but maybe also cry).

See also:

Kate Mulgrew on the Work of Waiting, in Acting and in Life • Blurring the Lines Between Criminal Justice and Popular Culture

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MATCHUP:

Sherlock (16) vs. Station Eleven (5)

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Sherlock (2010)

The game is on

Based on: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sherlock Holmes stories (1887-1927)

Subgenres: Former Tumblr Teen Bait • They Should Have Kissed • Seeing the Mind Palace

 

For those who frequented certain corners of the early 2010s internet, it was entirely possible to know everything about Sherlock without ever having seen it. This take on the character situates Holmes in a contemporary setting and employs superimposition alongside slick editing and undersaturated cinematography to visualize his deductions. But even though memes about Benedict Cumberbatch’s name are long out of style, appreciation of Sherlock endures, demonstrating more than anything why, over 100 years after Conan Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes stories, we still care about Holmes and Watson. –OS

Put it on when you want to feel smarter than you actually are.

See also:

Not My Sherlock • A Literary Feud is Afoot! • The Real Sherlock Holmes: How an Edinburgh Doctor Inspired Doyle’s Detective

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Station Eleven (2021)

Post-apocalyptic theater kids against the world

Based on: Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2015)

Subgenres: COVID Flashbacks • Beauty After the End • Gael García Bernal Siempre

 

A flu pandemic destroys civilization (yikes) and a traveling theater company makes their way through the ruins. This was a high budget adaptation of a beloved novel, and one that sparked a lot of Opinions: The liberties taken with the book tighten up some of the relationships, which mostly works on screen, though some thought they rendered some of the book’s ambiguities a bit too pat. Either way, the show looks great and the acting and pacing are enthralling—it’s hitting all the prestige TV high notes. And the writing grabs for your heart strings—the response from your tear ducts depends on your taste for melodrama.

But the show’s main assertion about the power of art gets me every time. This is a show about why you reach for the same book at a tough moment. The things we turn to when we need escape or solace become part of how we understand and remember our lives, and there are few other shows that gets at this nuanced way that art entwines itself into our being. –JF

Put it on when you need to cry remembering your favorite childhood book.

See also:

Don’t Worry, Station Eleven Isn’t Really a Pandemic Story • Every Coming-of-Age Story is an Apocalypse Story • What Kind of Pandemic Storytelling Do We Actually Need?

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MATCHUP:

Shogun (3) vs. Wolf Hall (2)

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Shogun (2024)

A stranger fumbling in a strange land, with swords

Based on: James Clavell’s Shogun (1975)

Subgenres: Memed • Subtitles • Epic Battles * Chaotic White Boys • Studying the Blade

 

Just when you thought there was no juice left in “epic prestige historical dramas,” Shogun arrived. The show is huge, with something for everyone: political turmoil, grand battles, and even lighter, fish out of water humor. The story is big too, following the chaotic fallout after the Dutch arrive in a Japan on the verge of the Shogunate Restoration. It’s hard to find a weak link: Shogun is gorgeous, well written, and superbly acted, particularly Anna Sawai, and Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays Lord Toranaga with a quiet, self-assured power. Full of rich texture and detail, the adaptation remains true to the 1975 Clavell novel, especially its gritty and grounded humanity. In every way it exceeds the 1980s adaptation.

Why then isn’t Shogun even higher in our seeding? There’s a way in which the show hews too close to the prestige formula, perhaps, instead of chancing any riskier innovation. But with two more seasons starting production soon, there’s plenty of time for the already excellent Shogun to transcend the expected TV rhythms. –JF

Put it on when you miss studying abroad.

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Wolf Hall (2015)

The King and I

Based on: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009)

Subgenres: Milord and Milady Drama • Ye Olde Case Law • Divorced Guy Problems • Stiff Upper Lip

 

Cards on the table: Hilary Mantel is one of my favorite writers of all time, so Wolf Hall occupies a weird space for me. On the one hand, there is no way a television show can exceed the experience of reading the books, and on the other hand, I’m thrilled any time I get to revisit Mantel’s stories.

Luckily, the first season of Wolf Hall is exquisite: patient, cinematic, and subtly acted. Mark Rylance, Damian Lewis, and Claire Foy are all different flavors of calculating, and the conniving dance they’re locked into is mesmerizing. So much is communicated in looks, many hard to discern in the low lighting or obscured by the distance of court and class. It’s an unsettled, quietly tense show that steadily heightens the arcs of each main character, who get what they want but at tremendous cost. Just incredible writing in the first season, which lands an emotionally satisfying ending even if you know where these real historical events are headed.

The second season, alas, loses its footing. The next two books in Mantel’s trilogy are excellent and I applaud the impulse to adapt them, but returning ten years later with the same cast is more than a little dissonant. Still, the first season is good enough to put this show almost at the top of the pack all by itself. –JF

Put it on when you are thinking of going back to school to get your law degree.

See also:

How My Friend Hilary Mantel Got Inside People’s Minds • Diplomacy Noir • How Much Actual History Do You Need for a Historical Novel?

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MATCHUP:

Brideshead Revisited (1) vs. Agatha Christie’s Poirot (12)

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Brideshead Revisited (1981)

We have always remembered when we lived in the castle

Based on: Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Subgenres: Teddy Bears • Stiff Upper Lip • Everything Changed During the War • Drugs, Booze & Generational Privilege • Debating Catholicism

 

Evelyn Waugh’s observant humanism was always in interesting tension with his sublimated (then blatant) conservatism. His best book, Brideshead Revisited, is nostalgic for aristocracy but clear eyed about its sins, mining the tensions between class values and personal connection. So much to say, this eleven episode miniseries succeeds by faithfully and reverently adapting the novel to the screen—this is about as much of a one-to-one translation from the page as you can imagine, with most of the dialogue coming directly from Waugh. The friendship that unfolds over a few decades before WWII between Charles Ryder and the rich Lord Sebastian Flyte of Brideshead Castle is subtly acted by Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. The rest of the cast is great too, and they’re allowed to mope and emote around beautiful location shoots. Laurence Olivier makes an appearance, as one might expect, and of course actor Peter Bull’s teddy bear named Delicatessen stuns as Aloysius. It’s a wonderful TV classic. –JF

Put it on when you are wondering if you should reach out to an old friend.

See also:

How Campus Novels Reveal the Power—and Danger—of Pure Ideas • Not Far From Brideshead: On the Sad Glitter of Oxford Between the Wars

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Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989)

Belgian stereotyping with a side of murder

Based on: Agatha Christie’s “Poirot” novels (1920-75)

Subgenres: Murder Follows the Protagonist • Really Good Tea Sets • Mid-Series Genre Shift

 

Agatha Christie’s Poirot ran for almost 25 years, went through at least two major shifts in tone and format, and appears to have guest starred every notable actor in the UK at least once. But there was only ever one Poirot: David Suchet, in what remains the most iconic take yet on Christie’s Belgian investigator. In Suchet’s hands, Poirot’s fussy neuroses go from comic to pathetic from moment to moment, while Poirot’s intelligence becomes a warm, empathetic curiosity about the people around him. However much Suchet’s Poirot preens and waxes his elaborate mustache, we can always see his little gray cells working away. –CG

Put it on when you are prepared to Google at least one murder suspect per episode to confirm that the actor really did become a movie star ten years later.

See also:

Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist in history.

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MATCHUP:

M*A*S*H (3) vs. Pride & Prejudice (2)

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M*A*S*H (1972)

Antics among atrocities

Based on: Richard Hooker’s MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors (1968)

Subgenres: War is Bad • Wisecracking is Fun

 

Iconic anti-war sitcom *M*A*S*H* challenged what a television comedy was supposed to look like, layering drama and genuine commentary with its humor. A spinoff of the 1970 Robert Altman film, which was adapted from the Hooker novel, it ran for 11 seasons and its finale was, at the time of airing, the most watched television episode in American broadcast history. Set during the Korean War, it more obviously paralleled and criticized American involvement in Vietnam. Now considered classic TV, there’s a reason appreciation for *M*A*S*H* endures over 50 years after its premiere. –OS

Put it on when you need a history lesson with personality.

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Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Thee Pride and Prejudice

Based on: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Subgenres: Bonnets • Yearning • Water Cooler Fodder When There Were Still Water Coolers • Every Scene of the Novel

 

Has there ever been a TV mini series as beloved as this BBC charmer? Adapting one of Austen’s most beloved novels with scrupulous fidelity, Pride and Prejudice was an immediate sensation on both sides of the Atlantic when it premiered in 1995. Bright-eyed Jennifer Ehle rode her performance as Elizabeth Bennet straight into an acclaimed theater career, while Colin Firth’s turn as the saturnine Mr. Darcy was so magnetic it transformed him into a Hollywood leading man almost overnight. In the years since, there’s been more than one Pride and Prejudice on screens both big and little. But for purists, there’s never been anything to touch the classic. –CG

Put it on when you have a hankering for charged flirting in a drawing room.

See also:

Martin Amis on the Genius of Jane Austen (and What the Adaptations Get Wrong) • Every Mr. Darcy* Ranked • Why We Still Love Mr. Darcy, 200 Years Later

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See you tomorrow, when we’ll vote on the winner of each category!