ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some familiar paradoxes of adaptation, and their manifestations in televisual form. It investigates the nature of television adaptations, allowing for new manifestations of recurrent problems in adaptation theory. Microadaptation is a unique function of serial storytelling, where an entire episode can be devoted to retelling an older, well-known tale. Microadaptations allow series to briefly appropriate a text that is considered part of common culture, adapting the source to television and to the premise of the television show doing the adapting. These microadaptations are made for a knowing audience, not to introduce them to the classics, but to introduce the classics to the show's premise. The 'ultracanonical' sources are chosen then, not just for their familiarity, but for their adaptability; in choosing these source texts, the shows are referring not just to the text itself, but to its tradition of malleability to different media, and the traditions that allow for those different renditions.
