There seems to be a trend atm to take the characters from a book and create a completely different story/plot in film or TV

[KatyMac]

Two examples of this are "The Secret of Moonacre" & "Merlin" neither of these paid any attention to plot/storyline or even location

Why do people do this The Little White Horse was a lovely tale & while Moonacre was lovely it wasn't the same

And as for Merlin - I just can't comment

What do other people think?

No-one agrees?

Merlins not exactly a character from a specific book though is he. So anyone who uses him has as much right as the next to do what they will with him.

"Call me Gwen"

He is a historical character (whether real or not), and there are some "facts" that stay true throughout all versions of his history - the BBC version ignore most of them.

I think that even adaptations that are supposed to be be true to the book have always tended to end up quite different. I haven't seen either The Secret of Moonacre or Merlin though, so I can't comment on them.

I did really enjoy that Pride and Prejudice thingy that was on recently, the modern girl who goes through a door in her bathroom into the Bennets' house. I think with anything like this if it's done with flair then you don't mind a bit of deviation from the original, but if it's done in a plodding way then it's dire even if it's word-for-word the same as the book. From the reviews I'm guessing The Secret of Moonacre is lacking in flair.

I thought lost in austin was quite good - but there was no attempt at all to pretend it was the book (& left it open for a sequal about what Elizabeth got up to in this time)

Oh grrrrr. this gets me. The so-called adaptation of The Dark is Rising WTF??? This is a reason I tend to avoid watching movie adaptations of books I've read. I watched the bourne identity before I read it. And then realised that the only similarity between the book and the movie is that he has amnesia.

"Minority Report" was only very slightly related to Philip K Dick's story with the same name.

"Bourne Identity" had absolutely nothing to do with the film, except for the main character, Jason Bourne.