Film and television are two very different mediums. Movies are an open-and-shut case, usually following a traditional three-act structure from the beginning of a story to its natural conclusion. But TV shows are more open-ended than that. The goal is to be able to tell hundreds of stories about the same group of characters, resetting the premise at the end of each episode on a rinse-and-repeat basis.
This is why movies based on TV shows rarely work out, and vice versa. But some TV shows based on movies have been surprisingly brilliant. So, here are the five best and five worst TV shows based on movies.
Best: M*A*S*H
After Robert Altman told the stories of some Korean War medics with a pitch-black comic sensibility, the TV adaptation of M*A*S*H stretched a three-year war across 11 seasons.
The show was technically a sitcom, but it had a much darker sense of humor than the average comedy series, and it often slipped into sobering dramatic territory without a joke in sight — and it worked beautifully because the viewer genuinely cared about the characters. On top of that, M*A*S*H has one of the most satisfying and emotionally charged series finales in TV history.
Worst: School Of Rock
What worked so well about Richard Linklater’s musical comedy School of Rock can be summed up in two words: Jack Black. And what failed so miserably about Nickelodeon’s TV adaptation can be summed up in eight words: Tony Cavalero trying to emulate Jack Black’s performance.
Cavalero’s performance as Dewey Finn — or, at least, a character who is supposed to be Dewey Finn — is painful to watch at times. Without Black’s rock-and-roll charms and Linklater’s sharp direction, School of Rock doesn’t work.
Best: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: The Clone Wars tells the story of the Republic’s war against the Separatists, with clone armies fighting droid armies and Jedi Knights fighting Sith Lords. There was a theatrically released Clone Wars movie that acted as a backdoor pilot, but it was pretty shoddy.
The series itself was a huge improvement, building on prequel-era characters like Padmé and General Grievous and developing iconic new characters like Ahsoka Tano and Saw Gerrera.
Worst: Ferris Bueller
John Hughes’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a comedy classic of the highest order. Its TV adaptation, with the shortened title Ferris Bueller, is not. The premise is intriguing, as Charlie Schlatter plays a Ferris who wants to show audiences what he’s really like, claiming that Matthew Broderick’s portrayal of him in the movie was inaccurate.
However, beyond the pilot episode, this part of the premise was never really explored. And Schlatter didn’t have a fraction of the charm that Broderick had in the original movie. Not even Jennifer Aniston could save this series.
Best: Friday Night Lights
Peter Berg turned his middling sports movie Friday Night Lights into one of the most popular and crowd-pleasing TV dramas of the 21st century. The TV series upended the movie’s focus on football by tackling such issues as drugs, abortion, and racism.
Kyle Chandler replaced Billy Bob Thornton as the high school football coach at the center of the story, while wonderful actors like Connie Britton, Michael B. Jordan, and Jesse Plemons rounded out the supporting cast.
Worst: Heathers
The movie Heathers is a classic dark comedy that offers up a satirically violent version of the cutthroat world of high school. Its TV adaptation, however, was panned for its tone-deaf insensitivity.
Paramount Network delayed the series’ premiere a couple of times in light of school shootings before eventually just canning the show entirely.
Best: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
This is a rare case of the TV adaptation being way, way, way better than the movie. Joss Whedon first wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a film, and it got made as a by-the-numbers high school flick that threw Whedon’s dark tone out the window.
Realizing the potential in the premise for a long-running TV series, Whedon retooled it as an hour-long drama with the dark tone he’d originally intended and Sarah Michelle Gellar playing the title role.
Worst: Rush Hour
The phenomenal success of the Rush Hour movies is not because Lee and Carter are particularly well-rounded characters, or because a “buddy cop” pairing is a particularly unique premise.
What made those movies so great was the on-screen chemistry shared by Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. In the TV reboot, Jon Foo and Justin Hires just couldn’t compare.
Best: Fargo
Noah Hawley’s anthology series adaptation of the Coen brothers' Fargo didn’t copy the plot of the movie or adapt any of its characters. Instead, it emulates the unique tone of the movie, telling grisly crime stories about seemingly mild-mannered Midwesterners, complete with a dark sense of humor.
With such big-name stars as Ewan McGregor, Kirsten Dunst, Martin Freeman, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead doing their best “Minnesota nice” accent, FX’s Fargo has spent three seasons (with more on the way) adding tons of brilliant new material to the Fargo-verse.
Worst: Delta House
The screenplay for Animal House was written by National Lampoon alums Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, and Chris Miller. The trio amassed reams of material, mostly based on their own college experiences, and then cut it down to the golden stuff. The writers of Delta House, the movie’s TV spin-off, didn’t have any of that inspired brilliance. Producers Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons remained on board, but their contributions weren’t enough to save the series from being an unfunny travesty.
A couple of cast members from the movie, like Stephen Furst and John Vernon, returned for the TV series, but it was John Belushi who carried the movie, and he’s nowhere to be seen. Instead, Josh Mostel was cast as Bluto’s brother.