3 Body Problem

Really enjoying this show... very happy to see something scientific mixed with a good mix of mystery and a near perfect cast to portray all the characters. I don't know the source material, but my only subtraction is Auggie. My god what an incredibly weak, pathetic, and absolutely annoying character. I've heard other reviews say this is close to the source material tho so who knows, maybe the character is supposed to be that way. But the visuals are pretty impressive even though at times clearly on a budget, and I love the buildup that season 1 accomplished.

Seriously 500 characters required... but I ran out of stuff to say...

Something is just off. For the readers of the original novel, you know how carefully Cixin Liu planted every detail, slowly guided you into that plot trap, and boom, a crazy idea with a magnificent scene showed up and blew you away. That is not something to be found here in this show, it's all because of the pacing, everything is raging forward, and the big ideas just flows out like the rest of the story, nothing special, nothing epic. I cannot speak for those who have never read the book before, but I doubt people can really catch the essence of those big ideas. It has nothing to do with casting, recreating or anything, I'm not criticizing those.

And if you find the characters in the original book are flat enough, somehow David & Dan find a way to make characters in this show even more flat, more flat than those dehydrated Trisolarans. By the way they call them Santi now which is probably the only thing loyal to the original novel. That is the price of building 5 (or 4, or more than 5, who cares) protagonists at the same time in a show less than 9 hours. The good thing is the way they rearranged the story line did left plenty of space for the protagonists to grow in future seasons. Let's just hope the crew use this to their advantage in the next few seasons.

Everything else is just a typical Netflix show, industry standard production, industry standard cinema, industry standard everything. For that it deserves a solid 7/10. It's a good show, and if you are not familiar with the original you might find some parts quite intriguing, first few episodes might be bit slow if you don't have any idea where the plot is heading but get better after ep3. It is what it is, it's a TV show detouring from the book and ,at least the first season, isn't your typical epic Sci-fi. It tries to please everyone but hardly satisfies anyone. Hope to see how things develop next season.

"3 Body Problem" held my attention longer than most T. V. series. It's a mysterious sci-fi with enough moving parts to keep you guessing, but not so many as to keep you totally confused. Some of the world's smartest scientists were killing themselves and no one knew why. The most significant information we had as viewers was a terrestrial satellite in China that was being run by a physicist named Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao) roughly fifty years ago, and separately, a super-advanced VR headset being used by a physicist named Jin Cheng (Jess Hong) and a rich guy named Jack Rooney (John Bradley) in the present day. It was all mysterious, awesome, and unnerving. Some very unexplainable events were happening that had even the most preeminent minds baffled.

I thought "3 Body Problem" was great as long as they didn't go too deep into the interpersonal relationships. That kills shows for me unless that's what the shows purport to be from the beginning. If I'm watching a sci-fi, I want sci-fi; if I'm watching an action film, I want action, etc. I want the interpersonal drama to be as limited as possible. Give me what I need in order to know the personality of each character then pivot off of it into the matter at hand. I think shows that spend too much time on personal drama and relationship drama are wasting valuable time. I feel like they do that to fill space which is a sure fire way to make me checkout.

"3 Body Problem" largely stayed away from the interpersonal drama until episodes seven and eight. It was as if they ran out of steam a bit and needed content. I don't know where "3 Body Problem" goes after season one, but I think they have enough momentum to go far so long as they don't get in their own way.

Netflix.

I went into this completely blind--never read the books or saw the Chinese version, and only knew it was a sci-fi show by the guys from GoT. So I had no expectations. I thought it was good, but something was missing that kept it from being great.

The production was good, but not inspiring. The acting was good, but I never really felt emotionally connected to the characters, although I came close with Jin. It would have been nice to have more background and world building to become more vested in the story and characters.

The plot itself was fine enough, but events seemed to unfold quite quickly without ever showing any effort. A lot happened, but it lacked depth. I thought it was good enough to watch another season, but it didn't really knock my socks off at any point. Good enough, I suppose.

I liked the contemplative nature of this show, but it quite quickly degraded into silliness, and disappointingly so, because it started off pretty well.

We need shows like this one promised to be, but the clues were there right from the start with the annoying constantly smoking cast. Brought to you by the same people who scuttled 7 years of game of thrones with a half ar$ed 8th series. Interestingly this series was 8 episodes long but the show runners killed the show well before the final episode, so I guess that's progress for them, condensing 8 years of disappointment down into an eight episode arc.

I don't know what to think after finishing this first series. It was tantalising in its premise, but so disappointing in its execution.