The Most Exciting Book-to-TV Adaptations Coming in 2023

There is nothing better than watching your favorite literary worlds brought to life through ambitious interpretations. Whether we realize it or not, book adaptations make up a large chunk of our yearly television viewing, with some of the most recent ones being Interview With the Vampire, Fleishman is in Trouble, and Under the Banner of Heaven. 2023 is already shaping up to be a fantastic year in this realm, with a slate packed with promising adaptations. Spanning a wide array of genres, from engrossing science-fiction stories and true crime to coming-of-age tales and dazzling romances, there is bound to be something for all book lovers and binge-watchers to enjoy. 

Primetimer's put together a guide to the most exciting book-to-TV adaptations we can look forward to in 2023.

The Lying Life of Adults (Netflix)

Premieres January 4 

Following the Oscar-nominated film The Lost Daughter, Netflix continues the streak of Elena Ferrante adaptations by ringing in the new year with a six-part series based on the enigmatic Italian author’s novel The Lying Life of Adults. An angsty coming-of-age story, it centers on a young woman’s transition from childhood to adolescence in 1990s Naples. 

Mayfair Witches (AMC)

Premieres January 5

After the success of Interview with a Vampire’s first season, AMC debuts Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches. Based on Rice’s horror novel series Lives of the Mayfair Witches, the supernatural drama follows Rowan Mayfair (Alexandra Daddario), a neurosurgeon who discovers her connection to a family of power witches haunted by an evil force. The series premiere will be simulcast on AMC, IFC, Sundance TV, WE, and BBC America. 

Lockwood & Co. (Netflix)

Premieres January 27

This supernatural fantasy series is based on Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co., a series of young adult paranormal detective novels consisting of five installments, which follows teenagers at the titular ghost-hunting agency as they battle ghosts and other various deadly spirits in London. Attack the Block director Joe Cornish helms and writes the eight-episode series.

Daisy Jones and the Six (Prime Video)

Premieres March 3

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s wildly popular 2019 novel, which charts the meteoric rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac-inspired fictional rock band called Daisy Jones & the Six in the 1970s, finally comes to the small screen. The long-awaited adaptation (the series was first announced in 2019) stars Riley Keough and Sam Claflin.

Love & Death (HBO Max)

Premieres early 2023

Fresh off the success of WandaVision, Elizabeth Olsen returns to our screens in Love & Death. Based on John Bloom and Jim Atkinson’s 1984 book Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs and two Texas Monthly articles titled “Love & Death in Silicon Prairie, Part I & II,” the HBO Max series chronicles the events that led to the gruesome murder of Betty Gore by her friend Candy Montgomery in 1980. Love & Death is the second dramatization of Montgomery’s story in as many years; Jessica Biel starred in and produced Hulu’s Candy in 2022.

White House Plumbers (HBO)

Premieres March 2023

HBO’s latest political drama, based on public records and Egil Krogh and Matthew Krogh’s book Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House, tells the story of how Watergate masterminds E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy led to the downfall of the Nixon administration. Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux star in the central roles with Kiernan Shipka, Domnhall Gleeson, Lena Headey, and Ike Barinholtz rounding out the cast. 

Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu)

Premieres spring 2023

The Hahnaissance continues! Kathryn Hahn stars in Liz Tigelaar’s eight-part adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s collection of essays titled Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. The series centers on a woman who reluctantly agrees to write an anonymous advice column called “Dear Sugar” as she struggles to keep her own life together. Michael Watkins and Welcome to Chippendales’ Quentin Plair also co-star. Tigelaar previously adapted Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere for Hulu. 

Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV+)

Premiere date TBD

Based on the 2022 best-selling novel of the same name by Bonnie Grams, Apple TV+’s series set in the early 1960s will star Brie Larson as Elizabeth, a scientist whose career aspirations aren’t taken seriously in a society that believes women belong in the domestic sphere. After finding herself pregnant and losing her job, Elizabeth accepts a gig on a TV cooking show and uses it as a way to reach women across the country. 

All the Light We Cannot See (Netflix)

Premiere date TBD

Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2014 novel tells the story of a blind French teenager who crosses paths with a young German soldier as she tries to survive during World War II. Stranger Things’ Shawn Levy directs this  four-part adaptation, which stars Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, Lars Eidinger, newcomer Aria Mia Liberti, and more. 

Wool (Apple TV+)

Premiere date TBD

Wool, the first installment of Hugh Howey’s hit trilogy of dystopian science fiction novels Silo, takes place in a future where a community exists in a large silo underground with many regulations that are intended to protect them from the toxic atmosphere. Starring Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, and Common, it has wrapped production and is expected to premiere in 2023. 

American Born Chinese (Disney+)

Premiere date TBD

For graphic novel lovers, Disney+ has produced a series based on cartoonist Gene Lien Yang’s 2006 illustrated work of the same name. Starring Ben Wang, Yeo Yann Yann, Chin Han, Ke Huy Wuan, Michelle Yeoh, and many more, American Born Chinese centers on a teenage boy who becomes friends with a foreign exchange student and gets entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods. 

Three Women (Showtime)

Premiere date TBD

Lisa Taddeo’s debut non-fiction novel explores female desire and sexuality through the experiences of three women across America named Lina, Sloane, and Maggie. Shailene Woodley stars as a fictional writer who persuades the women — played by Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise, and Gabrielle Creevy — to tell their stories. 

One Day (Netflix)

Premiere date TBD

A little over a decade since the Anne Hathaway-led film, David Nicholls’ One Day is once again receiving the adaptation treatment, this time in the form of a series on Netflix. Starring The White Lotus breakout star Leo Woodall and This Is Going to Hurt’s Amika Mob, the drama covers the lives of two protagonists on the same day they first met over the span of 20 years. 

Big Swiss (HBO)

Premiere date TBD

In her first major television role since Killing Eve concluded, Emmy winner Jodie Comer stars in HBO’s adaptation of Jen Beagin’s forthcoming novel Big Swiss. The series follows a woman who, after beginning a new life in New York by anonymously transcribing sex therapy sessions, becomes fixated with one patient, thus leading to an obsessive relationship between the pair. 

The Buccaneers (Apple TV+)

Premiere date TBD

Edith Wharton’s stunning prose was bound to be transformed into a television series, and Apple TV+ has not one but two in the works. As we await news on Sofia Coppola’s interpretation of The Custom of the Country, the streamer will deliver an eight-episode series based on Wharton’s unfinished final novel The Buccaneers, which centers on a group of young American girls who enter the London Season of the 1870s with more than finding husbands on their minds. The titular characters will be played by Kristine Froseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Aubri Ibrag, Imogen Waterhouse, and Mia Threapleton. 

Lady in the Lake (Apple TV+)

Premiere date TBD

Natalie Portman’s first television endeavor, which co-stars Moses Ingram, is bound to be a captivating hit. Helmed by Honey Boy director Alma Har’el, the Apple TV+ limited series based on Laura Lipman’s Lady in the Lake is set in 1970s Baltimore, where an unsolved murder causes a housewife and mother who leaves her marriage to become an investigative journalist. This leads her to meeting a hard-working mother juggling several jobs and a passionate commitment to advancing the agenda of the city’s Black community. 

Expats (Prime Video)

Premiere date TBD

Lulu Wang makes her first foray into television with an adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel The Expatriates for Prime Video. Set in Hong Kong, it revolves around three women whose lives are bound together after an expat community is struck by a catastrophic event. The series stars Nicole Kidman, Brian Tee, Jack Huston, Saraya Blue, and Ji-young Yoo. 

The Three-Body Problem (Netflix)

Premiere date TBD

From showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and co-creator Alexander Woo, this science fiction epic based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem tells the story of humanity’s first encounter with an alien civilization and stars Eiza González, Jovan Adepo, Benedict Wong, Jonathan Pryce, and more. The series is expected to be Netflix’s most ambitious and expansive title to date; Amazon was once rumored to be paying $1 billion to gain the rights to this highly sought-after book.

The Sympathizer (HBO)

Premiere date TBD

Park Chan-wook returns to TV as the showrunner for this limited series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel, The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. An espionage thriller and dark comedy exploring identity, war, and politics, The Sympathizer centers on a French-Vietnamese Communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his subsequent exile in the United States. The cast includes Sandra Oh, Kieu Chinh, Hoa Xuande, Fred Nguyen Kahn, and producer Robert Downey Jr., who will play multiple antagonists.

Jihane Bousfiha is a culture writer based in Florida.