Top Ten Tuesday #342

Hi all! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these. I was in London over the weekend, we went to see the new musical version of Indecent Proposal on Saturday and it was really fantastic, I highly recommend going and seeing it if you’re in London before its run ends on the 27th November, because it was such a fun night out, and the Southwark Playhouse is such a lovely venue, who like all theatres after almost two years of the pandemic could really use the support! We also had a great meal at this lovely little Italian place called Flavours of Naples, which I definitely want to go back to again.

Anyway, it was Tuesday when I started writing this post (even though it’s not now, sorry about that, this took way longer than I thought to do!) and so I have another Top Ten Tuesday for you, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re meant to be talking Books To Read if You Love/Loved X, but I decided to switch it up a little and instead I’m going to do If You Liked This Book….Watch This TV Show, as I thought it would be easier and I read a really fun post on LindseyReads blog a few weeks back that used the same idea, so I wanted to try it for myself. Most of these will probably be similar vibes & themes than necessarily have massive plot similarities, just so you know! So here we go:

1. If you liked The Last Bookshop In London……watch Land Girls

• 

• 

Not really all that similar in plot, but both are set in around the same time period (The Last Bookshop in London covers the early war years and the Blitz (1939-41) and Land Girls is similar, around the early 1940s. They also have a strong focus on the home front, so if you’re interested in UK based war stories and what the largely women left behind at home did to contribute to the war effort, then Land Girls would be great for you after reading The Last Bookshop In London. They’re also both quieter kinds of war stories, which I thought made Land Girls a good fit for fans of The Last Bookshop in London.

2. If you liked Vicious……watch The Umbrella Academy

• 

• 

Again this is definitely more a vibes thing than the plots containing many similarities, aside from the fact that both focus on superheroes (or villains in the case of Vicious) but I feel like fans of Vicious would definitely find a lot to like in the Umbrella Academy too. Like Vicious, The Umbrella Academy follows people with special powers, although instead of college roommates, it’s a family of estranged adoptive siblings, who come back together after the death of their adoptive father. I would say The Umbrella Academy is a bit weirder than Vicious, but they definitely have similar vibes, stories about people with superpowers set in worlds that are similar to our own & both have adoptive families/found families centred in them (Mitch, Victor and Sydney in Vicious and the Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy). Vicious also just feels very comic book-esque, so I feel like a series based on a comic book is a good shout for Vicious fans.

3. If you liked The Diviners…..watch Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

• 

• 

Okay so 90% of this is the 1920s setting, let’s be honest here, the 1920s is the biggest draw of The Diviners and it’s the biggest draw of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries too. Miss Fisher doesn’t have fantastical elements like The Diviners, however, it does have a female lead who much in the vein of Evie from The Diviners, is considered “too much” for the time period. I feel like Phryne is who Evie could be when she got older and grew into her “too muchness” and accepted it as a positive rather than a negative. We also have a murder mystery in The Diviners, so if you liked that, well it says it right there in the title, Miss Fisher has murder in spades. Miss Fisher also deals with a lot of social issues of the time in the same way that The Diviners does. Honestly, this is all really just an excuse to get more people into Miss Fisher because it’s such a fun show!

4. If you liked We Were Liars…..watch Gossip Girl

So We Were Liars is completely different to Gossip Girl in terms of plot, one is a mystery, the other is a soapy drama, though it does have a mystery element as a running thread of the show is working out who the anonymous blogger behind Gossip Girl is. Where the two do share massive similarities though is the focus on extreme wealth and privilege: We Were Liars definitely does it with a lot more nuance, but I think fans of We Were Liars could find a lot to like in Gossip Girl as well as Gossip Girl also delves into the messiness that lies underneath the trappings of wealth, and I definitely feel like the Sinclairs with their arguing over the family fortune could definitely have been Lily and Carol in one of the latter seasons where they argue over their mother’s estate.

5. If you liked Dangerous Girls……watch How To Get Away With Murder

This is definitely a vibes more than a plot thing, How To Get Away With Murder is a law school set murder mystery, with characters in their 20s whereas Dangerous Girls follows three high schoolers on their spring break when one of them is murdered and the other is arrested for her murder. But the reason I feel fans of Dangerous Girls would love How To Get Away With Murder is that both have seriously shocking plot twists, so if you like twisty books (which Dangerous Girls definitely is) then How To Get Away With Murder is right up your street. Dangerous Girls also jumps around in time a lot, exploring both before, during and after the murder, and How To Get Away With Murder does the same thing, you get the initial outcome of the mystery first and then it jumps around in time to show how you get there, so if you liked that structure from the book, you’ll definitely like the way that How To Get Away With Murder unravels its stories.

6. If you liked Every Breath……try Elementary

Like Every Breath, Elementary is a modern day Sherlock retelling, and it also has a gender swapped Watson, so if you’re a Sherlock fan (which you clearly are if you’ve read Every Breath) and liked the gender swapping aspect, then Elementary might be right up your street. Every Breath is set in Melbourne, Australia and Elementary is set in New York but the basic idea between both are the same, so if you’re a mystery fan who likes Sherlock then I highly recommend Elementary (controversial opinion here, but I actually liked it more than the BBC Sherlock. The 45 min episodes meant the mysteries were tighter and I thought they got a little more creative with making characters that are so well known a bit more their own).

7. If you liked Ninth House…..watch The Magicians

This may be slightly cheating as The Magicians was a book before it was a TV show, but I don’t care, the comparison worked. If you liked Ninth House for the University setting mixed with dark magic, then The Magicians would be right up your street as it is set in a magical University and definitely explores the darker side to magic too. The series definitely went off the rails a bit, I think around Series 3 was when it got a bit too weird for me, but the first couple were a lot of fun.

8. If you liked Little Fires Everywhere……watch Desperate Housewives

If you liked the small town vibes with lots of secrets and mysteries that Little Fires Everywhere is full of, then Desperate Housewives would be right up your street. The narration is very similar (Little Fires Everywhere is told in limited third person POV, and Desperate Housewives has a literal omniscient narrator as dead neighbour Mary Alice Young narrates the story of her friends), and though Little Fires Everywhere is definitely more serious than Desperate Housewives (which is basically soapy fun), the whole idea of a small town where the neighbours know everything and the neighbourhood looking perfect on the surface but being far from it are definitely prevalent as much in Desperate Housewives as Little Fires Everywhere (note: Desperate Housewives is a show from the early 00’s so there are aspects that have aged…..badly to say the least).

9. If you liked The Time Traveler’s Wife…..watch Outlander

Again this might be cheating a little as Outlander is also a book, but again the comparison worked. The Time Traveler’s Wife also follows a couple who has a relationship across different time periods as one is a time traveller, although Henry travels within his own timeline whereas Jamie and Clare are only together in his time, and The Time Traveler’s Wife is not historical fiction. Outlander, like The Time Traveler’s Wife is very romance focused, the core story revolves around the romance between Jamie and Clare, with obviously a time travel element, so if you liked that about The Time Traveler’s Wife and you’re interested in history (as Outlander is set across different time periods in the past) then Outlander is definitely worth a try.

10. If you liked Blind Beauty……try Heartland

This is definitely a niche one, as Blind Beauty is a book from my childhood, it was originally published in 1999, and if you’re not into horses, it’s probably not one you’ve read. However if you have, I highly recommend watching Heartland, as the centre of Blind Beauty is the relationship between Tessa and her horse Buffoon and how the two form a bond and help to heal each other from the trauma of their lives. Heartland has a very similar focus as Amy’s job is working with traumatised horses and their owners, and the bond between horses and their owners is a key one for the series, so if you liked that aspect of Blind Beauty, I definitely think you’d enjoy Heartland. Heartland is also a book series that I loved when I was a pre-teen (though the show is super different, they stopped following the books after I think the second season!).

So there we go, those are some of my If You Liked This Book….Watch This Show recommendations, I hope that the hours I spent fighting with the WordPress block editor to do the images were worth it! Have you read any of these books? Seen any of these shows? Do you agree with my recs? Are there any other shows you would recommend to fans of these books? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is Characters I’d Love An Update On, which should be a fun one as I always wonder what book characters are doing after the story is finished! Bonus, that post won’t include pictures, so shouldn’t take anywhere near as long as this week’s, and you should actually get it on Tuesday!