When it comes to authors to trust for penning works ideal for TV adaptations, Charlaine Harris has proved herself a winner. She created the world and characters that drove hit HBO supernatural drama True Blood for seven seasons. Now, NBC is looking to bring another of Harris’ sagas to television with an adaptation of her three-part book series Midnight, Texas.
The project is still in the development stage for NBC, according to TVLine, so any news of casting is still a ways off. It will be unsurprisingly set in the small town of Midnight, Texas, where the supernatural and real worlds collide in Midnight, and those who set foot there are wise to not dawdle. Filled with dark secrets, mysterious citizens, and sexy encounters, the town with one traffic light has a seedy underbelly that is exposed to any who stay around long enough to learn the truth of Midnight.
The Midnight saga hit the bookshelves in 2014 with first installment Midnight Crossroad. The second installment Day Shift was released back in May of 2015, and the third and final installment Night Shift is due to be released in 2016. How closely the adaptation will stick to the novel trilogy depends on how involved Harris is, since the creative team probably wouldn't otherwise know where the saga will go in the third book. Of course, franchises ranging from Harry Potter to Game of Thrones have managed to stay pretty close to the source material even when the story has not yet been concluded on page, so Midnight, Texas could be as faithful to the novels as possible in an adaptation.
Still, HBO’s True Blood was hardly beholden to Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries book series. Plot departures of the show from the novels were in fact frequent and large. That’s certainly not to say that True Blood was a complete takeoff from Harris’ novels; elements and characters were consistently brought from page to screen. The combination of book material and creative license on the part of HBO and Alan Ball made True Blood a commercial and mostly critical hit.
The premise of Midnight, Texas may sound like a bizarre hybrid of Brigadoon and “Hotel California,” but True Blood sounded no less far-fetched prior to its premiere in 2008, and it amassed a huge fanbase over its seven seasons until it finally came to an end in the summer of 2014. True Blood did have the benefit of airing on a network on which pretty much anything – from violence to nudity to language – goes, but NBC has somewhat pushed the boundaries in the past. Charlaine Harris’ books have already proven to be a gold mine for launching successful television franchises, and we have no reason to be anything but optimistic about a potential series based upon Midnight, Texas.
