Best of 2020: TV series based on or inspired by books

The Queen’s Gambit follows the life of an orphan chess prodigy, Elizabeth Harmon, during her quest to become the world’s greatest chess player while struggling with emotional problems and drug and alcohol dependency. The story begins in the mid-1950s and proceeds into the 1960s.

In Cherokee City, Georgia, the mutilated corpse of a young boy, Frank Peterson, is found covered in saliva and human bite marks. A hooded figure with a grotesquely deformed face lingers outside the Maitlands’ house, and Glory finds her younger daughter suffering from apparent nightmares of a man in her room telling her bad things.

In 1813, households are preparing for the social season of arranging matches for marriage. Simon and Daphne agree to pretend to court, so that Daphne will enjoy the attentions of suitors eager to steal her away from a duke while Simon will have respite from ambitious young ladies and their mothers.

Esty, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, is living unhappily in an arranged marriage among an ultra-Orthodox community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. She runs away to Berlin, where her estranged mother lives, and tries to navigate a secular life, discovering life outside her community and rejecting all of the beliefs she grew up with.

Grace Fraser is a successful psychologist who lives in Manhattan with her husband Jonathan, an oncologist, and their young son Henry, who attends the elite Reardon School. Grace helps some of the other Reardon parents plan an auction event, where she meets an enigmatic woman named Elena.

This series follows Dracula from his origins in Eastern Europe to his battles with Van Helsing’s descendants and beyond. The Count Dracula legend transforms with new tales that flesh out the vampire’s gory crimes—and bring his vulnerability into the light.

After Rendell Locke is murdered at the hands of former student Sam Lesser, his wife Nina decides to move with her three children, Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode, from Seattle to Matheson, Massachusetts, and take residence in Rendell’s family home, Keyhouse. They soon become aware, though, of a demonic entity that is also searching for the keys for its own malevolent purposes.

Sydney Novak is a 17-year-old living with her mother and younger brother a year after the death of her father. On her way home, she runs into Stanley Barber, her neighbor, who suggests they should hang out soon, to which Sydney reluctantly agrees. Later that night, after a cold discussion with her mother, Sydney sits frustrated on the floor of her room when part of the wall cracks behind her.

The series follows Marianne and Connell through their time at secondary school in County Sligo on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, and later as undergraduates at Trinity College Dublin. He is popular in the school community, though he is diminished by remaining silent during the bullying of Marianne.

A rideshare driver is thrown into her worst nightmare when a mysterious passenger enters her car. Her terrifying, heart-stopping ride with the stranger unfolds over 12 hours as she navigates LA in a chilling game of cat and mouse.

Lovecraft Country follows Atticus Freeman as he joins up with his friend Letitia and his Uncle George to embark on a road trip across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father. This begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback.

Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. The story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.’