We here at TV Insider would never condone shirking required-reading assignments and watching screen adaptations instead, nor will we ever admit to having done same. The fact remains, though, that many literary titles from middle-school and high-school curricula have inspired TV series and miniseries.
A few more are coming down the pipeline, too: We learned recently that Florence Pugh will star in a Netflix limited series based on John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and that Idris Elba will headline a small-screen transfer of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. We also know that Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits is getting a Prime Video series adaptation and that a TV series based on William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is in the works across the pond.
While we wait for those, we’re ranking 11 other TV series based on English-class favorites — you know, in case you want to be reminded of those classic books you definitely read when teachers told you to.