Joe Pickett

As a huge fan of the books I had reservations. Especially after Big Sky turned out to be such a disappointment. I was won over quickly by the actors. They brought the world of the novels to life for me. Joes commitment to his family,job,and sense of right and wrong is a breath of fresh air in our troubled times. One quibble would be the casting of Nate as a softer guy than I would have liked but future seasons could correct that. Please make more seasons!

Series one: well done production, good story details and character motivation. The cast is excellent and acting overall good. This is a soft thriller, not overly violent and fairly realistic. The first episode is representative, but the story becomes complex and interrelated as it continues...

The TV series makes Joe out to be a fumbling "Barney Fife" of a game warden and not true to the character of the books. The plot lines and suspense are well structured but the dialogue is rough and predictable. It will entertain and engage you but the series could have been so much more. Does not do justice to the books, characters or franchise.

My main complaint is the series short changes the lead character of Joe Pickett. In the books, he is an intelligent, resourceful investigator with a sixth sense about criminal investigations but in the series, he is a stumbling, bumbling idiot that is a magnet for bad luck and only solves the crimes by falling into the situation/solution often as the last one to figure it out.

Many TV shows will, in the end, not be perfect with things like poor cgi, editing, writing and acting. For the most part, Picket was pretty darn good for the first 6 episodes before any major issue surfaced.

By episodes 7-9 the needed information or thing just started to fall into the lap of the good guys and the bad guys seemed to get dumber or suddenly acted out of character. Episode 8 went on way too long and episode 9 wrapped up halfway through.

There is a little environmental preaching in here and what little there is fits into the overall story and I don't feel like I have been clubbed.

Even with that the show was entertaining and I found myself liking the main characters. All of the actors did an excellent job, even the children.

I have never read the books but want to and I will be clicking on season 2 here shortly.

The CJ Box book series that this is based on is a fantastic action, adventure, drama written with wit and grace and exceptional character portrayals. It's really disappointing then that this series showed little respect for the books. The characters have all been stripped of their personality and looks and replaced with empty shells who lack any chemistry or realism and the fake accents some of them are using are just annoying and distracting. The 2nd rate cgi animals too are just bizarre. The author laid it all out, all they had to do was follow his lead and translate it for the screen. Opportunity lost. We'll always have the books though and maybe some day a worthy remake will appear.