TOP 10 - TV SHOWS TO MOVIES

Top 10 TV Show to Movies

Sex And The City and Get Smart are the latest additions to the genre you can succinctly describe as "movies made by using TV shows as the source material". While it is easy to rattle off a list of failed attempts at bringing the small screen to the big, it's also quite painless to come up with 10 great examples of TV being translated to the movies. Sit back, switch on and enjoy.... 10.

Charlie's Angels 2000

Let’s be frank: it was never going to top awards lists. Still, for those chasing skillfully vapid action, shameless raiding of bullet-time and a boggling abundance of T and A, Charlie’s Angels never puts a foot wrong. It’s a shiny, sexy music video with little if any relation to the iconic 70s crime show. But with Bill Murray nailing Bosley, Drew Barrymore getting nude and Matt Le Blanc hamming it up in priceless self-parody, does faithfulness really count? 9.

The Brady Bunch 1995

At first it sounds like the kind of flick you’d watch with a bucket on hand: an adaptation of the 70s’ most insipidly wholesome sitcom. But by anchoring the symmetrical stepfamily in their world of bellbottoms and old-fashioned family values, while hauling the rest of the world into the 90s, The Brady Bunch strikes the perfect balance between parody and homage. Moments like Greg’s obliviousness to car theft and Jan’s schizophrenic middle child syndrome make the Bradys easy to giggle at, but, respectfully, the film-makers give them the last laugh. 8.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut 1999

Not since Glengarry Glen Ross has the F-bomb been so gleefully ladled on. Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn’t squander the greater freedoms the movie format supplies, and they crafted two hours of South Park that were almost as over-the-top as they were funny. As you’d expect, nothing was sacred: parents copped it, Canadians copped it, Jews (of course) copped it and Bill Gates took a slug in the dome, all of it set to some of the most hysterically loopy musical numbers ever penned. And yes, the title is a dick joke. Live with it. 7.

Serenity 2005

George Lucas’s influence ensured the space western would be no original concept by the early noughties but, in the hands of Joss Whedon, it’s given snappy new life. Fish-eyed but weirdly hot Summer Glau’s the requisite traumatised psychic chick, Nathan Fillion’s the fast-quipping, gunslinging captain, and the rest of the ensemble (including Chiwetel Ejiofor as an often sympathetic uber-villain) are magnificent. The dialogue’s the other big draw card—the bastard child of Shakespeare and Buffy, and more fun than either. 6.

The Naked Gun Trilogy (1988 - 1994)

Leslie Nielsen’s funniest films were based on the short-lived Police Squad! TV series, which was axed after just six episodes. Never mind, they made some movies. And what movies. You wouldn’t realise it in the era of Meet the Spartans, but the parody genre was once funny, managing to be clever, stupid and irreverent at the same time. Case in point: in the second film, the villain is hurled from a high rise window only to have his fall broken by an awning—and then he gets munched by a lion. Priceless. 5.

The Wrath Of Khan 1982

Choosing from the ten Star Trek movies on offer might seem a daunting task if popular Trekkie opinion didn’t sway so strongly toward The Wrath of Khan. As the best Trek movie should, it balances camp popcorn entertainment against cerebral character drama and a villain you don’t quite know whether to love or hate. Spock’s heroic death cements this as top-tier Trek, and if there was ever a cooler rendition than Khan’s of Melville’s “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee…” we’d like to hear it. 4.

Maverick 1994

Maverick was another series from the Roy Huggins stable, the man responsible for The Fugitive, so he must be the most cinema-friendly TV man out there. Gibson’s turn as charismatic cardsharp Bret Maverick is a nice reminder of how sane Mad Mel used to be, and William Goldman’s witty screenplay of double, triple and quadruple crosses in the Old West is a delight. Having been the original "Maverick" on the small screen, James Garner adds Western street cred and in-joke cool, while Jodie Foster is beguiling as ever. 3.

The Quatermass Xperiment 1955

Made long enough ago to be drawn from a serial instead of a series, The Quartermass Xperiment was the film whose success turned Hammer Studios onto horror. It’s regarded as a landmark in British SF/horror film-making, and Stephen King and John Carpenter both name it among their favourite movies. The story—a rocket pilot begins mutating after contracting an alien disease—echoes down the years, in the Species trilogy, The Astronaut’s Wife, Slither, and a host of others that have never quite matched this 50s pearl. 2.

The Untouchables 1987

Penned by David Mamet and steered by Brian De Palma back when he was good, this was always going to be a corker. Sean Connery got an Oscar gong for his tough Irish cop Jim Malone; Costner made a dashing lead as Eliot Ness on his way from uptight suit to Kevlar-hard cop; and was Robert De Niro ever chillier than the white-suited Capone? There are no letdowns in this, the film that taught us never to bring a knife to a gunfight. 1.

The Fugitive 1993

For taut thrills, it can’t be beat: two magnetic leads as hunter and hunted, each as stonily determined as the other. The finale of TV's The Fugitive was, for a time, the highest ratings puller ever in the States, so the film-makers had big joggers to fill with the cinematic adaptation. That more people associate Dr Richard Kimble with Harrison Ford than David Jannsen is a testament to the successful big-screen shift. Tommy Lee Jones’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar performance has been hard to forget, as well.