Jesse L. Martin takes on the role of Alec Mercer in the new NBC series The Irrational. Is this a series that’s based on a book?
We’re learning a lot about human behavior in The Irrational. Alec Mercer goes through how people act rationally irrationally. He can predict what people are most likely to do based on statistics. Of course, he’s not always right, but he usually is.
Alec helps organizations, individuals, and more get to the bottom of situations. Sometimes, they involve murder. Othertimes, they involve missing people and financial crime. By day, he’s a professor, teaching others about human behavior.
Of course, with so much content now based on other source material, it’s natural to look at whether The Irrational is based on a book. What’s the verdict?
The book The Irrational is based on
This series is sort of based on a book. It’s not based on a fiction book, though. Instead, the series is based on the non-fiction book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely.
The book goes into what makes people tick. Ariely wants people to rethink everything they know about human behavior, using findings, experiments, and more to look into things that have happened in the past. We repeat mistakes over and over again, and the book helps us understand that. It’s a great look into our own behavior and understanding the things we do, helping us learn to avoid certain mistakes and situations.
The show takes certain elements of this book to develop the story and to use the facts and findings. After all, we hear Alec explain behavior so many times. However, the storylines themselves for the cases involve some creative writing by the team on the series.
The Irrational airs on Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.