Television killed the cinema star: 16 more shows worthy of the films that inspired them

Two years ago, the A.V. Club offered a list of TV shows better than the movies that inspired them. In the time since, more stellar small-screen series have been made from big-screen stories, further shattering the conventional wisdom that cinema doesn’t translate well to episodic television. In honor of these new triumphs of adaptation—and to make note of the older ones not mentioned before—we’ve drawn up a kind of spiritual sequel to that Inventory. Few of the shows listed below actually surpass the quality of their inspiration, à la Buffy or Friday Night Lights, both of which made the earlier list and hence aren’t included on this new one. But all of them do justice to their filmic predecessors, regardless of how many seasons they lasted.