The flood of literary adaptations continues in 2025, with streaming services and traditional studios mining contemporary and classic fiction for content. Here’s my assessment of the year’s major adaptations so far, judged both on faithfulness to source material and quality as independent screen works.

The Luminaries (Netflix) - Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel seemed unadaptable: 800+ pages of intricately plotted historical fiction set during the New Zealand gold rush, structured according to astrological principles that are nearly impossible to convey visually.

The six-episode adaptation made smart compromises. The astrological framework is simplified but present. The complex timeline is linearized without losing the mystery elements. Most importantly, the adaptation understands that Catton’s novel is ultimately about coincidence, conspiracy, and the stories we construct to explain chaos.

As an adaptation: B+. As standalone television: A-. The cinematography is gorgeous, the ensemble cast is strong, and non-readers will still be able to follow the plot. Readers will miss some of the novel’s formal complexity but should appreciate the care taken with character and atmosphere.

Birdsong (BBC/Stan) - Sebastian Faulks’ WWI novel has been adapted before, never successfully. This latest attempt benefits from modern television’s comfort with graphic violence and psychological complexity. The trench warfare sequences are visceral and horrific without being exploitative.

Where the adaptation stumbles is the dual timeline structure. The novel’s contemporary frame narrative is condensed to the point of incoherence. Viewers unfamiliar with the book will be confused by the jumps between 1916 and the present day. The central love story also feels rushed—the adaptation assumes emotional investment it hasn’t earned.

As an adaptation: C+. As standalone television: B-. Powerful in moments but structurally messy.

The Bee Sting (Apple TV+) - Paul Murray’s darkly comic novel about an Irish family’s dissolution during economic collapse was always going to be tricky to adapt. The book’s tonal shifts between humor and genuine despair require careful handling.

The four-episode limited series mostly succeeds by leaning into the discomfort. Each episode focuses on a different family member’s perspective, mirroring the novel’s structure. The performances are uniformly excellent, particularly the young actors playing the children.

My complaint is that the adaptation smooths out some of the novel’s rougher edges. Murray’s prose can be deliberately off-putting and aggressive; the screen version is more conventionally sympathetic. This makes for easier viewing but loses some of the book’s abrasive energy.

As an adaptation: B. As standalone television: B+. Accessible to non-readers but rewards familiarity with the source.

The Ministry for the Future (HBO) - Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate fiction novel presents enormous adaptation challenges: sprawling cast, multiple timelines, long passages of economic and scientific exposition. Many readers found the novel brilliantly ambitious; others found it didactic and undramatic.

The HBO series makes the controversial decision to significantly fictionalize and dramatize material that Robinson deliberately kept abstract. The terrorism subplot is expanded and made more character-driven. The economic policy discussions are translated into visual sequences and interpersonal conflicts.

Purists will hate this, arguing the adaptation betrays Robinson’s purpose. But as television, it works far better than a faithful page-to-screen translation would have. The show is propulsive, visually striking, and manages to convey complex climate science without talking down to viewers.

As an adaptation: D (it’s barely recognizable). As standalone television: A-. Judge it on its own terms and it’s excellent.

Victory City (SBS) - Salman Rushdie’s novel about a magical empire in medieval India seemed destined for adaptation, given its epic scope and cinematic imagery. The resulting eight-episode series is gorgeous to look at and narratively incoherent.

The problem is that Rushdie’s prose style—playful, digressive, packed with literary allusions and metafictional games—is integral to the novel’s effect. Strip that away and you’re left with a fairly standard magical realism plot that doesn’t distinguish itself from dozens of similar stories.

The casting controversy around British and American actors in Indian roles didn’t help reception, though the performances themselves are generally strong. The series feels like it’s trying to be prestige television without understanding what made the source material distinctive.

As an adaptation: C-. As standalone television: C. Looks expensive, feels hollow.

The Sentence (SBS/NITV) - Louise Erdrich’s novel about a small bookshop in Minneapolis during the pandemic and racial justice uprisings of 2020 arrives on Australian screens via a thoughtful four-part adaptation that respects the source material’s quiet observational style.

This won’t be for everyone—it’s deliberately paced, character-focused, and more interested in emotional texture than plot mechanics. But for viewers (and readers) who appreciate Erdrich’s work, the adaptation captures the novel’s blend of everyday realism, gentle humor, and ghost story elements.

The choice to keep the bookshop setting central was smart. The adaptation understands that the store functions as both literal space and metaphorical heart of community. As someone who works with AI strategy for businesses, I appreciated how the series handled the complexity of keeping a small independent business alive during multiple simultaneous crises without reducing it to simple resilience narratives.

As an adaptation: A-. As standalone television: B+. Faithful adaptation that may feel slow to viewers expecting conventional drama.

Trust (Paramount+) - Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel uses four different textual forms to tell overlapping stories about wealth, power, and narrative authority in 1920s New York. On paper, this seems impossible to adapt.

The series takes a radical approach: each episode is in a different visual style matching the novel’s textual variations. The first episode (the novel-within-the-novel section) is shot like a prestige period drama. The second (memoir section) uses intimate first-person camera work. The third (diary section) fragments the timeline and perspective.

It’s formally ambitious and sometimes brilliant, sometimes exhausting. Viewers will either find it exhilarating or pretentious depending on tolerance for experimental television. I admired the ambition even when the execution faltered.

As an adaptation: A for ambition, B- for execution. As standalone television: B. Your mileage will vary enormously.

The overall pattern in 2025’s adaptations: television has learned to handle complex literary source material with more confidence and formal experimentation than even five years ago. The best adaptations understand that faithfulness means capturing a work’s essential spirit and purpose, not reproducing every plot point and sentence.

The worst adaptations either treat books as mere plot scaffolding (losing what made the prose distinctive) or fetishize fidelity at the expense of working effectively as screen storytelling.

For readers, these adaptations offer interesting case studies in how narrative translates across media. For non-readers, the best adaptations stand alone as compelling television that might inspire curiosity about the source material.