A new year brings new book-to-screen adaptations to stream on cold winter nights. Watch for Kirkus’ in-depth columns on the second season of The Night Agent, based on the conspiracy thriller by Matthew Quirk (premiering on Netflix on Jan. 23), and an animated film based on Dav Pilkey’s bestselling Dog Man series of children’s books (premiering in theaters on Jan. 31). In the meantime, here are four more book-to-screen adaptations to kick off 2025:
Jan. 1: Missing You (miniseries premiere, Netflix)
Since 2018, there have no less than eight miniseries adaptations of Harlan Coben’s thrillers on Netflix, including an intriguing Spanish production of 2005’s The Innocent and, more recently, a British miniseries based on the 2016 novel Fool Me Once. (Both novels received Kirkus stars.) This new limited series from the U.K. adapts 2014’s Missing You, in which police detective Kat Donovan grapples with mysteries involving her fiancé, who dumped her nearly two decades before; her murdered father, a police detective; and a college student who wants Kat’s help searching for his missing mother. The series features a fine cast, including the excellent Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses, Harlots) as Kat and Richard Armitage, who also starred in Fool Me Once earlier this year, as police sergeant Ellis Stagger.
Jan. 10: Goosebumps: The Vanishing (season premiere, Disney+/Hulu)
R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series of teen horror novels were loosely adapted as a lively trilogy of Netflix films that made the list of our favorite adaptations of 2021. However, Stine is best known for his Goosebumps series of lighthearted monster-centered horror tales for kids, first published in 1992; they’ve sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. The books inspired this Disney+/Hulu streaming series, which tackles a different story with a different cast each season. The second season, subtitled The Vanishing, stars Friends’ David Schwimmer as Anthony, a divorced former botany professor whose twin teenagers, Devin (Dead to Me’s Sam McCarthy) and CeCe (Side Hustle’s Jayden Bartels) are visiting him in Brooklyn for the summer. The siblings get involved in an investigation into the 1994 disappearance of several teenagers, including their uncle, and it leads to a truly monstrous revelation. Viewers who enjoy old-school creature-features are sure to enjoy this series, which involves deadly plants wreaking havoc. (Little Shop of Horrors fans, take note.)
Jan. 12: All Creatures Great and Small (Season 5 premiere, PBS)
James Alfred Wight is better known by his pen name, James Herriot, under which he wrote a bestselling series of fictionalized memoirs about working as a veterinary surgeon in North Yorkshire, England, from the 1930s to the ’50s. 1972’s All Creatures Great and Small provided the title for a 1975 film and a popular BBC TV show, as well as this reboot series, which premiered in the United States in 2020 as part of PBS’ Masterpiece. It stars the amiable Nicholas Ralph as Herriot, a delightful Rachel Shenton (Hollyoaks) as his wife, Helen, and Howard’s End’s Samuel West as Herriot’s colleague, Siegfried Farnon. It’s found a devoted audience of its own—unsurprising, given its charms as a low-key and warmly nostalgic portrait of small-town English life. This season opens in the spring of 1941, with Herriot away training at the RAF Abingdon station in Oxfordshire, Helen at home with their infant son, and Siegfried struggling to handle the busy veterinary practice on his own.
Jan. 16: XO, Kitty (Season 2 premiere, Netflix)
Jenny Han’s bestselling YA trilogy about the life and loves of teen Lara Jean Song Covey—To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2014), P.S. I Still Love You (2015), and Always and Forever, Lara Jean (2017)—were all adapted as Netflix movies starring the entertaining Lana Condor. XO, Kitty, a Netflix series created by Han, focuses on Lara Jean’s younger sister, Kitty (a hilarious Anna Cathcart), and her complicated social and romantic travails while attending the Korean Independent School of Seoul (aka KISS). In this new season, the bisexual teen explores her interest in dating girls; she also wants to find out more about her mom, who attended KISS years earlier. Noah Centineo (The Recruit) makes a welcome return as the affable Peter Kavinsky from the earlier series.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.