Harry Dresden's Chicago isn't
our Chicago. So naturally there can be differences in a parallel reality.
I had heard of the Dresden Files TV series via some adverts on SciFi, but never watched as it didn't look like something I'd be interested in. I'd forgotten about the series when I first got turned on to the books by a friend. (Same friend also got me reading Anita Blake.)
I was somewhere around 5 books into Dresden when I saw the first episode of the series. Woah. Nuh-uh! There's a whole two things in common with the books. Its main character is a wizard named Harry Dresden and he lives in Chicago. Does TV Harry live in a basement, drive a VW Bug, make electronics go *pfft*, unlucky in love? Nope! TV Harry lives on the ground floor, apparently in back of his office, drives a Jeep, has a cell phone and has a significant other, at least in the first episode. Another item, do I recall correctly that TV Harry wears a trench coat, not a duster? I suspect Butcher has Harry wear a duster because the trench coat is so cliche for private investigators.
But wait, there's more. Or would it be less, as in even less like the books? I can see renaming Karrin Murphy to Connie Murphy because at the time there was a woman on the real Chicago PD named Karen Murphy (or some other phonetically equivalent first name) but changing the White Council to the High Council? What were they planning to rename the
to if the series ran longer? Feh, probably wouldn't even have had that since they didn't keep anything else. Another UGH! moment was some curtains by the door as protective wards that a baddie defeats simply by tearing them down.
If you haven't seen the TV series, I'm not saying don't watch it. Just don't expect it to be *anything at all* like the books.
A TV version of Dresden would be sooooo much better if they did each book as one season over several episodes.
What's with TV and movie writers who once they get their hands on a property, think they just have to alter 99% of it beyond recognition? To me that shows an extreme lack of skill, when they should be demonstrating how good they are at 'translating' a bunch of text description into visuals.
Good examples, the TV adaptations of "Hogfather", "The Colour of Magic / "The Light Fantastic" and "Going Postal". With those you can see that the writers and the rest of the crew really worked hard at putting
Terry Pratchett's story on the screen, not their own.
Bad examples, "Starship Troopers" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". With Hitchhiker's it looked to me as if after Adams' death the writers threw away almost everything Adams had a hand in and made up their own stuff. Especially awful was the bits where they cut the punchlines from gags that were used from prior versions. Troopers went on to spawn some direct to video sequels that I've heard are even worse. Mercifully, plans for sequels to Hitchhiker's quickly died when movie attendance plummeted soon after release.