
Amazon TV adaptation of Iain Banks' Culture series is cancelled - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/26/amazon-tv-adaptation-of-iain-banks-culture-series-is-cancelled
======
eindiran
I have always thought the the Culture novels are a bad fit for a TV series.
The non-chronological, only-loosely-based-in-the-same-universe style makes the
books very thematically and structurally different from one another: the shows
that you would get for "The Player of Games" vs "Surface Detail" vs "Use of
Weapons" vs "Hydrogen Sonata" would all look very different.

As a result, I am not optimistic that they would translate well to the small
screen. I would be more interested in seeing a miniseries based on a single
book, though perhaps they could be done as a kind of anthology series.

But this bumps into another potential issue: historically it seems like
keeping the quality of an anthology series up across seasons is very difficult
(see: American Horror Story, True Detective, etc), with Fargo as a notable
exception. That said, a show would bring in a lot of new fans to the series,
which is a big positive.

------
kwoff
Though the title says "cancelled", the article in a nutshell: "The author’s
estate ... said the “timing wasn’t quite right”".

~~~
TillE
That's just the (bizarre) reason given, it's still accurate to say that this
adaptation has been cancelled. Most optimistically we can say it's back into
some kind of vague development hell, from which a TV series may or may not
some day emerge.

------
mrlonglong
I'm deeply bummed about this.

