What A Discovery Of Witches Does Better Than The Books
Adapting a beloved book series to the screen is a huge challenge, both due to the task of bringing a pre-existing story to life, and because there's a pre-existing fanbase eagerly waiting to see if the storytelling is faithful. Some adaptations miss the mark — but others, like A Discovery of Witches, actually do a pretty good job.
The series, based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, follows Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), a historian and witch who forms an alliance with vampire Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode) to uncover the secrets of a bewitched manuscript. A Discovery of Witches boasts a big ensemble of fascinating characters and a spellbinding storyline that has fans eagerly awaiting its third season.
While A Discovery of Witches isn't a perfect adaptation, there are plenty of things it's gotten right, if the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are anything to go by. In some cases, it's managed to improve upon Deborah Harkness' book series and give fans a bit more to chew on. Let's take a look at one of the ways A Discovery of Witches does better than the books it's based on.
Marcus and Miriam have expanded roles in the TV version of A Discovery of Witches
When fans are sizing up an adaptation, one of the first things they look to is how the characters are brought to life on-screen. Sometimes, adaptations will take characters in slightly different directions than what readers initially encountered. That's true of A Discovery of Witches' Marcus Whitmore (Edward Bluemel) and Miriam Shepard (Aiysha Hart), and in their case, it's proven to be a good thing. The TV adaptation has given both of them, who appear as supporting characters in the All Souls Trilogy, much more to do.
Both characters retain their same basic traits from the book series — Marcus and Miriam are colleagues at Oxford and vampires, though as Matthew's vampire son, Marcus gets a bit more attention. He did feature in a recently released prequel called Time's Convert, but regardless of that, neither character spends that much time in the spotlight in Deborah Harkness' original trilogy (via Good Housekeeping).
In the TV series, they've been integrated into the storyline much more directly, and we've seen how they work as a part of Matthew's close-knit vampire family (via Screen Rant). They are often seen working as a team, and over the series' first two seasons, they've become fully realized characters with memorable on-screen personas. Since A Discovery of Watches' third and final season seems to be building to a dramatic finale, we'll likely see Marcus and Miriam's bond with Matthew, and perhaps even each other, put to the test before it's all said and done.