Tuning into some bookish entertainment

As March Madness is close to the end, the baseball season is soon to start and for those of us who are not into sports, TV time can get a little tricky to maneuver there.

Fortunately, if some of your regular favorite shows are being rescheduled due to sports coverage, there are a good number of viable alternatives to check out on cable and/or streaming with the additional bonus of being based on some very good books.

At the moment, Shogun is airing on F/X and Hulu with this fresh take on the iconic James Clavell novel getting good reviews from audiences and critics alike. Set in feudal Japan, John Blackthorne(Cosmo Jarvis) a maritime pilot on a Dutch ship, finds himself in the midst of political intrigue between Lord Toranaga(Hiroyuki Sanada) and those who oppose his rise to a position of power second only to the Emperor.

Blackthorne’s ship was captured by Toranaga’s forces and with the help of Lady Mariko(Anna Sawai) as translator, finds a way to make himself useful to  Toranaga. However, the conflict around him is far more complicated than he knows with his growing affection towards Mariko adding fuel to such deadly fire.

I remember the original miniseries from 1980 starring Richard Chamberlain (he was the go-to guy for this genre back then) and wound up reading a lot of Clavell due to this show. This new version appears to have much more of a focus on the historical drama elements of the plot than the romantic ones , a flip from the earlier adaptation. Definitely a good direction to go in here indeed:

Debuting this week on Paramount +  and Showtime is A Gentleman in Moscow , based on Awor Towles ‘ acclaimed novel about a Russian exile trapped in his own country.

Ewan McGregor plays the title character,Count Alexander Rostov, one of the few remaining members of the aristocracy after the revolution.  He was in Paris during most of the upheaval of Russia so on his return, Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in the attic of a once grand hotel.

Making a few friends (as well as keeping one enemy close) during his decades long stay, Rostov learns to take life as it comes but not without finding what joy can be had along the way.

I read most of the book(had to put it on pause due to other concerns) but this series might get me to restart it . The writing was lovely and picturing McGregor as the lead is certainly quite the incentive:

One book that I definitely did finish was Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty, which is now available on Peacock as a limited run series.

When matriarch Joy Delaney(Annette Benning) goes missing with only her overturned bicycle as a clue, suspicion falls hard on her husband Stan (Sam Neill) with their quartet of grown children taking sides over what actually happened.

Since I don’t have Peacock, I can’t say how well this adaptation is done but based on my recall of the book, it’s a rather intriguing and engaging story that does need a good amount of time to tell throughly:

Finding new books to read and new TV shows to watch can go hand in hand as the need to change up with the seasons and adjust to changing circumstances make such things an emotional necessity.

Fortunately, books still remain as adaptable catnip to studios and viewers alike so the odds of running out of one or the other are rather slim. Even in such daunting times as these, a new take on a previously published story can be welcome relief to shelter under with the book itself as an inviting umbrella to add to the fictional fortress of safety there: