F&SF on Television

The New York Times covered NBC's new fall line-up today and mentioned the shift towards fantasy and science fiction, occasioned by the success of such shows as "Heroes" and "Lost". I've got to say that of the new shoes that they mention, none of them seem particularly appealing, but who knows? - the new Bionic Woman may end up vastly more interesting than her predecessor. They also seem to stray a lot harder in the direction of science fiction than fantasy - a time traveler, a computer scientist, and a cyborg are the different protagonists.

I'd love to see more good F&SF on television, certainly. The Dresden Files is a series that made me happy to see on television. Although the show doesn't do the books justice, it has its moments, and the actor that plays Harry seems like great casting to me. And the idea of George R.R. Martin's GAME OF THRONES appearing as a mini-series makes me salivate like Pavlov's dog.

There's plenty of other series I'd love to see done well on television, but I have my doubts that the writing would do any of them justice, to tell the truth. Nonetheless, here's a few that I think would be particularly good.

Martin's WILD CARDS series was a shared world superhero setting that would make a killer show and blow "Heroes" out of the water, I think. The special effects might be expensive, but holy cow, would it be nifty.

Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books are great space adventure, have a charming and challenged hero, and would make spectacular TV.

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser similarly feature great, engaging heroes and would make a wonderfully atmospheric fantasy series - not as campy as Hercules, but with some of the same sense of humor and willingness to poke fun at the genre on occasion. For that matter, you could do a sci-fi series based on his Change War concept that could have the same episodic nature of StarGate - but with a significantly more interesting premise.

There's a couple of my votes - what would you pick?