Fierce Fidelity and Careful Transformation: Adapting Lemony Snicket's 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' for Netflix

Playfully advising that viewers 'look away' while acknowledging the pleasures inherent in consuming texts with dark themes, the Netflix adaptation of Daniel Handler's popular book series honours the novels' transgressive humour and self-aware narration. As Erin Hawley argues, the show's success is testament to the contemporary necessity of balancing fidelity to source material with taking full advantage of the possibilities of today's 'complex' television landscape.

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Teaching Media, video on demand, streaming, Barry Sonnenfeld, Neil Patrick Harris, television, House of Cards, breaking the fourth wall, complex TV drama, intertextuality, demographics