a5c7b9f00b A Chicago-based wizard worksa private investigator. This was one of the best fantasy/sci-fi shows on TV. It got steadily better over the season, and the main actors playing Dresden and Murphy were great. It tackled a wide variety of fantasy tropes while staying grounded in the Chicago setting, and the dialog was generally very well written. The hapless detective angle is a great mix with the urban magic setting in both the books and the TV show.<br/><br/>I think there are a couple of things that doomed it. First, the series differs dramatically from the books in all sorts of ways in the characters. Even Murphy&#39;s name had to be changed (apparently for legal reasons due to the presence of an actual CPD officer named Karyn Murphy. Bob was dramatically different in character, and was represented by a visual presentation by an actor (no doubt the logic was a floating skull is hard to turn in to a good on-screen character).<br/><br/>I saw the series first, and my enjoyment of it lead me to read the books, which I also really enjoy. If I&#39;d hit them in the other order, it&#39;s highly likely I would have been turned off in the first few episodes by how the characters changed.<br/><br/>Thing is, some of the changes in the show were improvements. The Morgan character was more multidimensional than the attack dog in the books. I found Bob to also be more interesting and multidimensional than the lecherous skull in the books. But Paul Blackthorne and especially Valerie Cruz did a fantastic job of presenting great characters. Sure, they differed in many significant ways, and if it had been a movie I might be more upset at the departures from the book series. But an ongoing TV series simply can&#39;t reiterate the plots and characters verbatim from the books when you&#39;re talking dozens of episodes. So it&#39;s too bad that those differences may have dragged it down.<br/><br/>The other factor was that it simply wasn&#39;t marketed all that well by SyFy. Combine the two issues and I suspect that viewers tuned out after the first few episodes and SyFy never built up the needed numbers. It&#39;s not a crying shame on the level of Firefly, but it is a shame and a show that I really think would have benefited from renewal. As it&#39;s now readily available on DVD and Netflix instant, I&#39;d strongly encourage people to give it a try and not base their opinion on how well it matches the books. I&#39;d also encourage people to read the books. I totally love this show and its characters. I hope Sci-Fi will bring it back for many more seasons .. the plots have been great, the chemistry between the actors is wonderful, and the use of Magick for the good of all is portrayed wonderfully. Terrence and Paul were the perfect picks to play these characters .. there are too many shows on TV that relate to the mundane world .. give us more shows like this where we can let our imaginations soar to other realms! We need more characters like Harry who seem to be &quot;highly improbable&quot; heroes. This show on Sunday night is just the end of the weekend pick me up a lot of people need! I have not read the booksI am a more visual type person, but instead of expecting the show to be a carbon of the books I would just think of the booksa reference to background detail, which to me would enhance watching the show on TV.
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295 weeks ago