5 Classic Sitcoms You Didn't Know Were Based On Beloved Books

HBO

Book to movie adaptations are definitely nothing new, and a lot of everyone's favorite (or least favorite) TV dramas, like "Game of Thrones" and "Outlander," are adapted from best-selling novels. Non-fiction books are also pretty frequently adapted; Christopher Nolan's Oscar-winning historical epic "Oppenheimer" is based on both a book and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and writer Patrick Radden Keefe's book "Say Nothing," which focuses on the "Troubles" in Ireland, was adapted into a massively acclaimed series. So what about books that became ... sitcoms?

To be completely upfront with you, there aren't a ton of sitcoms based on books, novels, or works of nonfiction. I'm not sure why this is other than an assumption that most "situational comedies" come out of premises dreamed up in writer's rooms rather than the adaptation process. Still, there are a few, and while some of them take major liberties with the source material, that's often for the better; in a few cases here, the TV shows are just flat-out better than the books upon which they're based. Now that we've got that out of the way, here are five excellent book-to-sitcom adaptations you should check out or revisit.

CBS

I bet you knew that the medical comedy-drama "M*A*S*H" was based on the 1970 movie of the same name, but I bet you didn't know that the movie and the show are both adapted from "MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors" by Richard Hooker, which was first published in 1968. Here's the thing. That book? It's ... not particularly good, nor are either of its sequels, largely because Hooker was a doctor by trade who required assistance penning his novels.

The show, though? That's a stone-cold classic. "M*A*S*H," which stands for "Mobile Army Surgical Hospital," chronicles the adventures, victories, and struggles of the 4077th division serving in Uijeongbu, South Korea during the Korean War. Developed by Larry Gelbart, "M*A*S*H" ran from 1972 to 1983, spanned 11 seasons and 256 episodes and stars Alan Alda as surgeon Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce and Wayne Rogers as his closest cohort "Trapper" John McIntyre. Alongside their fellow doctors and medical professionals Frank Burns (Larry Linville), head nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit), orderly Maxwell Klinger (Jamie Farr), company clerk Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff), and the unit's chaplain Father John Mulcahy (William Christopher), Hawkeye and Trapper do their best to get through day-to-day operations and emergencies.

An underrated aspect of "M*A*S*H" is that it aired during America's participation in the Vietnam War and carefully threaded the needle as a result, criticizing interventionist policies without wading too far into political discourse ... and that tricky balancing act paid off. "M*A*S*H" is one of the most beloved and acclaimed sitcoms in the history of the genre, and with my apologies to Hooker, it surpasses the novel in pretty much every way imaginable.

HBO

At this point, it's a truth universally acknowledged that HBO makes some of the best shows on television, and they earned that reputation thanks, in large part, to two hits that started in the late 1990s: "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City." The former isn't based on a book, nor is it a sitcom ... but "Sex and the City" hits both of those qualifiers. Based on author Candace Bushnell's New York newspaper column and book of the same name, "Sex and the City" — originally developed and created by Darren Starr before the second showrunner Michael Patrick King took over at some point after the third season — focuses on Bushnell's stand-in Carrie Bradshaw, a sex columnist living in an inexplicably huge Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

Though the show employs a pretty weird fourth-wall breaking technique during its inaugural season, it eventually course-corrects and follows Carrie through all of her romantic misadventures, especially ones with Chris Noth's Mr. Big, and those of her best friends Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), and Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon). Each woman occupies a different archetype: Samantha is an ultra sex-positive PR maven, Charlotte is a hopeless romantic who works at an art gallery, and Miranda is a hyper-pragmatic lawyer who puts her career above relationships. (Carrie likes hot sex and good shoes, for her part.) "Sex and the City" was truly a ground-breaking series — women didn't get to star in raunchy, boundary-pushing shows like this before and it changed the game entirely — and it's also pretty great, if you ignore the two feature films and the abhorrent spin-off series "And Just Like That." Again, with all due respect to Bushnell, this adaptation also clears its source material handily.

TV Land

The premise of "Younger" — both the TV Land series created by Darren Starr and the 2005 novel by Pamela Redmond Satran — is categorically insane, but once you give into it, it's also extremely fun. In both the book and TV show, the latter of which ran for 7 seasons (the last of which aired on Paramount+ and Hulu) from 2015 to 2021, we meet Liza Miller (Sutton Foster), who learns that her ex-husband David (Paul Fitzgerald) lost a ton of money gambling and can no longer afford to pay for their daughter Caitlin (Tessa Albertson) to go to college. Desperate for work, Liza tries to return to publishing, the field where she worked before having Caitlin and becoming a stay-at-home mom, only to realize that at 40, nobody wants to hire her for an entry-level position.

So what does Liza do? She gets a fake ID that says she's 26 and immediately gets a job at Empirical Press, a major publishing house in Manhattan, and moves in with her longtime best friend Maggie Amato (Debi Mazar) in Brooklyn. At Empirical, she meets and befriends editor Kelsey Peters (the always welcome Hilary Duff) and works underneath the demanding marketing head Diana Trout (Miriam Shor), and outside of work, she strikes up a surprising romance with tattoo artist Josh (Nico Tortorella), who's actually 26.

Again, this premise shouldn't work, because it's just ... stupid? Still, it does — thanks in large part to Foster's unbelievable and seemingly endless charisma, the show's light and funny tone, and its genuinely surprising plot twists. (If you've seen "Younger," you know what I'm talking about when I say "steel beam.") "Younger" is a delight from beginning to end, so check out the book and then watch the show.

The CW

"Gossip Girl" is based on a book series (kind of), but is it a sitcom? I say yes. Not only is it situational — the action takes place, save for a handful of episodes, in Manhattan and primarily on the island's ritzy Upper East Side — but this show is funny, both intentionally and unintentionally. Adapted very, very, very loosely from a series of young adults novels by Cecily von Ziegesar (who based them, also loosely, on her own experiences attending elite New York schools), "Gossip Girl," helmed by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of "The O.C.," opens right as Blake Lively's teenage socialite Serena van der Woodsen returns to the Upper East Side from a self-imposed, mysterious exile to an upstate boarding school.

Serena's unexpected return sends her former friend group — queen bee Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), Blair's longtime boyfriend Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), and bad boy Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) — scrambling, and social outsiders Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) and his little sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen) also sit up and take notice. I said "Gossip Girl" is a loose adaptation (in the books, Chuck is canonically queer and has a pet monkey, which is ... not true in the show, where he ends up as Blair's love interest) and I also said it's funny, and if you've watched it, you know that's true. Not only do the show's writers give incredibly sharp, clever lines to Blair constantly (a personal favorite of mine being "Destiny is for losers"), but at one point, Chuck's dead dad comes back from the grave, Blair marries a prince, and Dan publishes a nasty tell-all novel about his friends. Trust me, you'll laugh watching "Gossip Girl," and even though the books are super different, their satirical approach is worth a look too.

Hulu

Like "M*A*S*H," "High Fidelity" has two major adaptations. The original novel, written by Nick Hornby and published in 1995, was famously adapted into a film in 2000 directed by Stephen Frears with John Cusack as Rob Gordon, a record store manager who tries to use music to figure out what went wrong with his past relationships. In the 2020 Hulu series created by Veronica West and Sarah Kucserka, the gender is flipped, and Zoë Kravitz, the ultimate cool girl, takes on the role of Robyn "Rob" Brooks, who owns Championship Vinyl in Brooklyn and also wants to interrogate her romantic failures through her killer music selection. 

On the series, Rob is flanked by friends and coworkers Simon (David H. Holmes) and Cherise (future Oscar winner Da'Vine Joy Randolph), and in the pilot episode, we watch as Rob goes on a date with a guy named Clyde (Jake Lacy) so she can avoid a blind date orchestrated by her brother. As Rob explores her romantic past and breaks the fourth wall to let the audience in on her secrets, she ends up growing unexpectedly closer to Clyde but also explores other connections.

Sadly, "High Fidelity" was canceled after just one season by Hulu, which is a huge loss; Kravitz is perfect in this role, and the series was clever, heartwarming, and fun without feeling, even for a second, like a cheap copy of the film. That great first season of "High Fidelity" will live on on Hulu, but still — it's a crying shame that we didn't get to see more of Rob's story, tweaked and perfected for a new generation.