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Courtenrooms, briefcases, incriminating documents, a sole crusader against the system,

these are just some of the signs that you might just be watching a movie based on a John Grisham novel.

A lot of Grisham movies have been really successful, and they've come from some big-time directors.

But which ones are the very best? I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Stephen Thompson. Today we are ranking the best

John Grisham adaptations on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. It's just the two of us today. Linda,

you wrote a piece for NPR that ranks all of the John Grisham novel adaptations

for film and TV. Grisham, of course, is a writer mostly of legal thrillers, including a bunch

of bestsellers. There are a ton of adaptations on film and TV, and we're going to talk about your

top five. Sure. Well, I want to say first that the reason why I did this

ranking in the first place is that there is a TV adaptation of The Rainmaker, which is really one of

his best novels, I think, which is on USA and Peacock. I think it's like middle bottom of this list.

It doesn't make this top five. If you came to this wanting to hear about that, you can read a little more about it in the piece that I wrote. But I have to clarify a few caveats to this list in honor of lawyers. There are some technicalities that I observed. I really only ranked legal thrillers here. So there is some nonfiction,

there is Christmas with the cranks. First thing I looked for with your list.

You can't compare that to the other ones. So I did not do that. Also, was not able to include a

couple of things that I could not watch, right? Not because they were bad, but because they're not

available. Yes, exactly. Did not have access to a pilot for the street lawyer that starred Eddie Sibrian.

There also was a TV adaptation of the client that is nowhere.

Also, there was a movie called The Gingerbread Man, which was directed by Robert Altman and starred Kenneth Branagh.

But that I discovered is not an actual Grisham novel.

It's a manuscript he never published.

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