Fall is the perfect time for curling up with a good book—or maybe a good movie. (We’re not monsters.) Even better if you can hit two birds with one stone, of course, and this after all is Literary Hub, so here we present the literary movies and TV shows—adaptations, documentaries, and other book-adjacent fare—we’re most looking forward to this season.* Let us know what you’re most excited for in the comments. *NB: For this preview, I’m only including TV series premieres (you should already know about Slow Horses) and film debuts in the US market. You could say Virginia Woolf is having a moment, though personally, I’d have to argue, when isn’t she? This film, which adapts Woolf’s little-read second novel, is Woolf by way of John Hughes: an Edwardian-era rom-com about an astronomer who does everything in her power to avoid what is expected of her: getting married.
Tina Gharavi directs based on a screenplay by Justine Waddell; Haley Bennett stars as Katherine Hilbery, with Lily Allen as Mary Datchet, Elyas M’Barek as Ralph Denham, and Jack Whitehall as William Rodney. Kit Harrington and François Civil star as the lookalikes Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, with Mirren Mack as Lucie Manette, in Daniel West’s four part miniseries adaptation of Dickens’ historical classic, directed by Richard R. Despite A Tale of Two Cities being frequently cited (including in this trailer) as one of the best selling novels of all time, this is the first notable screen adaptation since the ’80s.
Reviews, alas, are mixed. The (supposed) final installment in the Susan Ryeland series finds the editor working on a curious manuscript, an Atticus Pünd continuation written by Eliot Crace, the grandson of the famous writer Miriam Crace, who claims that not only was his grandmother murdered, but that the secret is hidden within his book. Very good publicity tactic!
Unless it somehow goes wrong… Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan return as Susan Ryeland and Atticus Pünd; Rebecca Gatward directs. Per our September streaming guide: Patrick Brammall stars in this Australian thriller, in which a police dispatcher receives a call from a young woman who sounds like his daughter—who has been missing for 11 years—and must (of course) find out the truth. In this Dutch drama series based on Noort’s bestselling novel, four rich and glamorous couples are living the dream—until one of them dies in a mysterious house fire.
Things begin to unravel, and Karen, the group’s newest member, finds herself pulling at threads, as everything she thought she knew about her new friends begins to unravel. The book has been pitched as “Desperate Housewives scripted by Patricia Highsmith,” which is very appealing, and it’s the first in a series, so this could be your new favorite thing. In which Maria Sten, aka Miss Denmark Universe 2008, aka Reacher‘s Frances Neagley, gets her own spin-off. 28 years after the original cult classic (and Lit Hub favorite), the Owens sisters, and aunts, and daughters (now almost grown) are back to break the curse and conjure up some Millennial nostalgia.
Probably not, but at least everybody’s skin looks magically amazing! After a long and complicated legal battle, Michael Lockshin’s adaptation of one of the best novels of all time is coming stateside, after its huge success in Russia in 2024. I am hopeful for this anti-authoritarian fantasia, which has gotten very good reviews internationally, despite the fact that I have always considered it to be nigh unfilmable.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
