Books turned into films and television

When the actor reads the book

The overlap between screen casting and audiobook narration is much commoner than you would guess, and where it happens it is usually the recording to choose — the performer already knows the part.

• The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth — Andy Serkis played Gollum and later recorded The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion as an audiobook narrator.
• Hercule Poirot — David Suchet played Poirot for twenty-four years and reads him; Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in the films and reads him too; Hugh Fraser played Hastings and narrates many of the novels on the UK store.
• The Wheel of Time — Rosamund Pike played Moiraine and reads the newer recordings of the opening novels.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Martin Freeman played Arthur Dent in the film and reads Douglas Adams's sequels to it.
• Bridgerton — Adjoa Andoh, Lady Danbury on screen, narrates widely on Audible, but not these books: the novels are read by Rosalyn Landor.
• Wolf Hall — Ben Miles played Cromwell on stage, not in the BBC series, which cast Mark Rylance; Miles narrates the whole trilogy.
• Harry Bosch — Titus Welliver played Harry Bosch on television and reads the Bosch novels from The Burning Room on.
• Discworld — Richard Coyle played Moist von Lipwig in Going Postal and reads the Moist von Lipwig novels in the current recordings.
• Brother Cadfael — Derek Jacobi played Cadfael and reads him too, but his recordings are abridged at about three hours each; the complete readings run seven hours or more.
• Jeeves and Wooster — Stephen Fry played Jeeves on ITV, and reads Jeeves stories in a Wodehouse collection on Audible; the volumes listed here are read by others.

All 57 celebrity narrators →

Two things worth knowing before you start

The screen version often diverges, and sometimes overtakes. Shetland ran out of Ann Cleeves novels years ago and kept going. Game of Thrones finished a story its books have not. Reading order and viewing order stop matching, so a listening order is worth having.

A famous adaptation does not mean a good audiobook. Where a screen tie-in exists there is often more than one recording of the book competing under similar listings — abridgements, dramatisations and, for Christie, retellings for language learners. Check which one you are buying before you spend a credit.