Unquestionably all this is true, and yet (in my opinion) the adaptations of detective novels (especially British ones) are generally so much superior to anything else that's going on on television, that they still tend to be the best viewing choice on any given evening. I was particularly amused by the evolution of Inspector Morse's Sergeant Lewis. In the original first novel, Morse had two assistants, Inspector Lewis (who was short and stocky) and Some Other Guy Whose Name I've Forgotten (who was tall and thin). In the TV adaptation, the sergeants were conflated, and so we had a tall, thin, Sergeant Lewis. Instead of fighting this, Colin Dexter went with it, and in the later novels it was Sergeant Lewis all the way, without any particular physical description. Let the reader imagine him as he likes. Now the tall, thin Inspector Lewis has his own TV series.