How Did You Approach the Source Material in the Original TV Series?

When you went back to alf white's, james harriet bugs, how did you approach the source material? Was there a sense that it was sacro sant, or that this was material that could perhaps be dismantled and reassembled as the narrative required? Well, i mean, i hadn't actually read the books before am i was asked as interested in the job. Then i should have started reading them all a and realized that thi sort of, there's another whole layer there, which i didn't feel was fully explored in the original t v series. I got really excited about, achley, and finding that extra depth of thes characters.