Wayward Pines

Wayward Pines is an adaptation of Blake Crouch's novel series 'Pines', and is produced by M Night Shyamalan, with Matt Dillon as the main character Ethan Burke.  It's what we'd class as 'good tosh' - pretty implausible all the way through, but with enough twists and turns to keep us interested.

In format it's a strange mix of Life on Mars (is he imagining it all?), Twin Peaks (strange town with quirky inhabitants), The Truman Show (he's constantly being monitored) and The Prisoner (each episode - so far - he's tried to escape).

Despite the author being an exec producer, there is lots online about the differences between the books and the TV show, and it also seems to turn into a very different sort of show once - spoiler alert - some new characters come to live in Wayward Pines in episode 3, and again in episode 5 where a completely new set of characters are introduced.  

One thing we feel though is that drama shows are now buying up books to adapt based on a high concept format - with this being the mix of LoM, Twin Peaks, Truman and Prisoner - and more coming in in episode 5.  As such it's a pretty flexible format & setting - a bit like Lost was - and we can see it running for several series, just by bringing in new story lines and characters.

Another book currently being adapted for TV, by Amazon, is Philip K Dick's The Man in The High Castle - about an alternate history of the US in the 1950s where the Axis powers won the second World War, with Japan in control of the Western states, and Germany in control of the East coast, with an independent federation of states in between.

Again, if you cover the original book's plot pretty quickly you have a flexible format to create lots of new stories & presumably the rights for these things aren't all that expensive compared to the potential profits from a long-running drama.

Empire

Empire, the new series from Precious and The Butler director Lee Daniels, is a total blast. 

Telling the story of the succession battle for the empire of rap mogul Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard) between his three sons - Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray), the gangster rap one, Jamal (Jussie Smollett), the gay one, and Andre (Trai Byers), the business one - it leaves no cliche un-mined, but does it with such brio that you forgive it its sins.

A typical scene starts with two characters talking, with a third character walking on stage left, with some news.  The three then discuss, then head off in different directions.  Action moves very quickly, with characters falling out, falling in love, or killing each other in minutes.  If Fortitude was this speedy it would have all been done in two episodes. 

Added attractions include Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon, Lucious' first wife, newly released from prison and stealing every scene, and cameos from Cuba Gooding Jr as a songwriter and Naomi Campbell as (I thought it as 'herself but IMDB says) 'Camilla Marks', who Hakeem has an affair with.  Of course he does.

 In the States it was the hit of the season, ending up with 20m viewers an episode on Fox.  It's a bit strange that it's ended up on E4 rather than Sky Atlantic, and it may graduate to a bigger channel if it builds an audience.  Its natural home will be as a box set and on demand though - it's very more-ish and perfect for indulgent binging.