I should think we're all familiar with the experience of going to see the film made of a favourite book, and being really disappointed. Conventional wisdom tells us that the two forms are totally different, and it's ridiculous to judge one medium on the criteria of the others, but it's tough not to, partcularly when one feels a "prior commitment" to the book. (Hugh Laurie says h and Stephen Fry initially refused the other of playing Jeeves and Wooster in a television version of the P G Wodehouse stories, on the grounds that Wodehouse's genius was verbal, and it would be impossible to act it - before agreeing because if the stories were going to be loused up, they wanted it to be by them rather than by someone else!)
I was wondering what everyone's best and worst experiences with "the film of the book" (or tv versions) were? Has it ever happened in reverse? I was bowled over by Ian Richardson in the tv political drama "House of Cards" - adapted from Michael Dobbs' novel by Andrew Davies who went on to script the famous BBC Pride and Prejudice - but when I sought out the original book I found it rather badly written and uninventive.
