Dear makers of SUITS, I am more than halfway through watching SUITS again after a gap of nearly seven years, and something rather strange has happened. This time, I am feeling much more satisfied and intrigued at the same time. Not because I had forgotten the characters. Not because the suits suddenly look sharper than they did the first time. And certainly not because Harvey Specter has somehow become more Harvey Specter with age.
It is because, after all these years, the show feels more relevant.
Watching SUITS for the second time makes you realise that it was never really just a show about lawyers winning cases. It was about people trying to win at life, often while quietly losing battles within themselves.
And somewhere in the middle of that realisation came a thought. Why does SUITS not have a proper life in books?
I do not mean a coffee table book filled with photographs from the series. I mean novels. Real books. The entire SUITS universe translated into fiction that allows us to live inside these characters in a way television simply cannot.
Because what makes SUITS special is not one character. That is perhaps its greatest achievement.
You watch Harvey and think he owns the show. Then Jessica makes one decision and reminds you who really commands the room. You think Mike is the emotional centre until Donna quietly reads a situation before everyone else has even understood it. You think Louis is the character you are supposed to hate, only to find yourself rooting for him a few episodes later.
And that is the brilliance of Louis Litt.
You are allowed to hate him. Then understand him. Then sympathise with him. Then get angry with him again. And somehow, you still want him to win.
That cannot happen with poorly written characters. It happens when writers understand that human beings are rarely heroes or villains. They are complicated, insecure, ambitious, frightened, loyal, selfish, generous and vulnerable, sometimes within the same conversation.
Harvey’s confidence is inseparable from his vulnerability. Mike’s brilliance exists alongside his insecurity. Jessica’s authority never makes her less human. Donna’s extraordinary understanding of people does not make her immune to pain. Rachel’s ambition is never merely ambition. And Louis, perhaps more than anyone, is a walking contradiction.
Which is why choosing the “best” character in SUITS is almost impossible.
And perhaps that is exactly why the show deserves to become a book.
Imagine being inside Harvey’s head before he walks into that room. Imagine knowing what Jessica was really thinking when everyone else was watching her. Imagine hearing the thoughts Louis never said aloud while understanding how Donna knew something before everyone else. Imagine watching Mike make a decision on paper, with every doubt, fear and calculation visible.
Television gives us the words they say.
A novel could give us the words they never say.
That is an entirely different experience. And perhaps that is where SUITS could find its second life.
Years after its original run from 2011 to 2019, the show has already proved that it can travel across generations. A new audience can discover it, an old audience can return to it and somehow both can find something different in the same scenes.
That is usually a sign of a story that has outgrown its format.
So here is the slightly unreasonable request from one viewer.
Give us the books.
Give us Harvey, Mike, Jessica, Donna, Louis and Rachel. Give us the offices, the rivalries, the betrayals, the victories and the conversations that made this world memorable.
Do not simply retell the television series.
Expand it.
Let us enter the minds of these people. Let us see the moments between the moments. Let us discover what happened before the camera arrived and what happened after it left.
Because SUITS was always about much more than law.
It was about people.
And people this well written deserve to live somewhere beyond the screen.
