User reviews

I've been looking forward to 3 Body Problem for what feels like a decade. I just binged the entire first season in two days and it's everything I hoped it would be and more. This series is adapted from the best selling novels of the same name. It's a show that will pull you into their world and not let go. There are so many mysteries that will keep your mind going the entire time. You can tell they put a lot of money into this show too because the visuals are absolutely beautiful. The only thing that could've been better was character development. I stole this quote from a review I read but I couldn't agree more, "3 Body Problem sets a new standard for what sci-fi is capable of." I'm already looking forward to next season. It can't come fast enough.

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.

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...

At the time of this writing the show has a 7.9 rating. I suspect in time this will go down to around 7.2 although personally I think it deserves a 6.

Too harsh? I don't think so. While I didn't hate the show and am not one of those people who need or expect all adaptations to adhere strictly to the source material I think if you are going to make changes in your adaptation they should make sense and make some sort of improvement. This show failed on both scores. The original books by author Cixin Liu were hard sci-fi and brilliant in scope and imagination. The adaptation dumbs down the source material for TV and makes changes to appease the political viewers. None of this is an improvement. All it achieves is it takes everything that made the books so different from everything else out there and turns it into the same kind of Hollywood tripe that's a dime a dozen these days.

3 Body Problem is here and it did not disappoint. First of all I've never read any of the books so I have nothing to compare it to or be disappointed about. It looks like most people do like it but there are those who won't because it's not exactly like the book but it's hard to adapt a good book to a show or movie. As long as it's still entertaining then who cares? Just take it for what it is and that's a really good sci-fi series. They've been talking about and hyping this show up for years now. The creators of Game of Thrones (David Benioff and D. B. Weiss) are the creators of this show and that brings a lot of expectations with it. I'm glad they released it on Netflix so we get all the episodes at one time because I couldn't stop watching. I'm glad they already renewed for two more seasons so they can finish the story because everyone knows there's nothing more frustrating than a show getting cancelled before they conclude the story. They now know they have 2 more full seasons to finish it. Can't wait!

Although the series is considerably different than the book, it does a fantastic job of including the heart of the novel with new and interesting characters. There are some tremendous concepts in both the book and the series. Anxiously awaiting the next two seasons.

Book 1 is one of the finest science fiction novels ever written. The series is engrossing and the character development and interaction is surprisingly adept.

The theme of alien invasion is a long standing trope for science fiction, but this is quite unique. The added mix with the Chinese cultural revolution is fascinating. Sadly, the religious themes are not surprising.

First two episodes are confusing but in an good way. Show builds op strong for me. Episode 3, 4 and 5 very strong.

But then, from like episode 5 the focus shifts to the most annoying character i have witnessed in a long time: Auggie.

I dont know if it is a bad actress or a good one and Auggie is ment to be this annoying but is a very hard watch.

At some point you just want to skip every scene she is in. I have still one episode left and my god i hope the character is written off.

So now I have 98 words left to typ but i just wanded to express my hate for this character nothing more. Finished.

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.

I knew absolutely nothing about this series when I started watching it apart from the fact it was set in China/UK and it had something to do with aliens.

Hard to know where to start really - the show begins as a kind of murder mystery with an almost supernatural element to it. It then brings in religious themes followed by horror. It hits home on so many levels - the human relationships within it are powerful and evolved. The science is complex, but pure. The questions it throws up - about the nature of God, life, right and wrong, good/evil.

The directors previously brought us Game of Thrones and some of the production qualities are the same. This show really doesn't hold back and there's some moments that will be uncomfortable for the squeamish. Many of the GoT cast are used and without exception they are brilliant in their roles - the entire cast in fact is excellent. I found it odd to learn that it was a US production because it is mainly set in the UK with a largely British cast.

The contrast between crazy VR world settings and a local English pub is just one of the quirks that make this show so appealing. So many SF shows are completely detached from the world we live in, we never connect the themes to our current lives. This show won't let you escape that easily - if you don't sleep just a little uneasily wondering "what if" after a couple of the episodes then I'll be surprised.

I look forward to the second and third series, although I feel that they're unlikely to surpass this masterpiece.

Though the original book is a masterpiece of complex and engaging sci-fi, the show doesn't quite hit the mark. It feels a bit watered down and simplistic. So far, it struggles to create an immersive world, glossing over the rich details that make the story stand out. It also tends to oversimplify dialogues and character actions, which takes away from the joy of piecing together the plot on your own. Instead, it frustratingly obfuscates key elements to artificially pique interest. The characters lack depth, and neither the cinematography nor the sets are particularly remarkable. The first season rushes through its narrative, setting high expectations for future seasons without delivering much substance itself. I might revisit my review if upcoming seasons show significant improvements in budget and script quality. For now, it feels like an intriguing but underwhelming pilot that leans heavily on the potential of its future installments.

The 3 body problem is an absolutely engrossing genre mystery with compelling characters, human drama and even a few laughs.

I binged this entire first season and I can't wait for the next. The premise does stretch the plausibility of the physics, but does not eliminate any suspension of disbelief. The execution of this show is top notch, the production, writing and the acting.

There are themes here that not everyone will agree with, a certain misanthropy underlying the show, but you can easily enjoy the show without feeling like these ideas are being shoved down your throat like many shows these days do.

If you are fan of genre fiction, and you haven't watched this already, you are missing out!

After watching all episodes of the first season all hope that some have voiced after being disappointed with the first one or two episodes are misplaced: the sequences with the young Ye Wenjie are actually one of the best parts of the series: the dark atmosphere and the intensity of the acting of Zine Tseng were a perfect fit. The contemporary crime story around the string of suicides of high profile scientists was a good continuation, not the least because it was carried by two good actors, Liam Cunningham and Benedict Wong. Wong got some more depth and complexity, because he is shown in his interactions with his son, but at the same time these parts don't seem to contribute anything to the main story. Cunningham has to play an important, but very one-dimensional character. But the whole subplot is soon finished and for the viewer the small amount of suspense contained here, is killed by showing us the solution early on. The characters are later reused in a very unconvincing and silly way, basically it seems England has only one leader figure and one police man.

The contemporary story line around the group of young geniuses in England which takes up most of the screen time dropped the ball on many levels. The actors are quite uneven in their performance, but even more striking is that some of them are a good fit for their role, while others are painfully unconvincing casting decisions. Eiza González as Auggie Salazar is supposed to be a technical genius, a nerd, but she completely fails to project any cool intelligence. So in those scenes where she has to show emotions or where she is just part of a group of (totally not nerdy) friends, she is convincing, but really fails in making us believe she is an academic and scientists (her impressive beauty is probably more of an obstacle than a plus in this context). Jess Hong as Jin Cheng is much better in doing exactly that. She handles the different aspects of her character and the development of the character very well. Again, the writers are quite clumsy: Though we follow Cheng all the time with her friends, where she is a very normal, emotional and non-academic person, they add a scene with her fiance Raj and his family, where she is suddenly nerdy and socially awkward.

Her love story with Alex Sharp as Will Downing is well done from both sides, and Sharp plays the melancholy, self-depracating dying man quite well too. Jovan Adepo as Saul Durand is rather pale and unmemorable. This is not helped by the fact that he is supposed to be especially intelligent, but is quite often rather slow in the uptake.

The writing is painfully mediocre. The story centers on some great ideas, but the writers didn't trust the audience to find them interesting enough to tag along, so they filled the screen time up with uninteresting love stories and a lot of moral discussions which don't lead to anything but some self-righteous noise. They don't care about the main plot points at all, probably because they were a given: Why is the distortion of research in physics such a problem? What are the results of the public knowledge of the existence of aliens and of their coming?

As we all know, the series is based on one of the best Science Fiction publications of the 21st Century. The novels tell a very wide-ranging story in a scientifically sound manner and always amaze the reader by taking a very broad view. Scientific considerations play just as much a role as sociological ones. All of this is mind-expanding in the best sense of the word. So much intellectuality is of course unacceptable for a television series. But the fact that the authors of the series then cut out so much that the most important plot points are almost incomprehensible, but instead a sweet mash of romance and morality is stirred in, is unnecessary and cannot be excused by the requirements of a television series.

All in all this series tells a story, mainly about a group of very beautiful young people and how complicated their love life is. There are also some aliens in it and some incomprehensible stuff about physics, but it is not a lot, so don't worry.

It's remarkable how an entertaining yet complex show as 3 body problem can be ruined by one single character. The Mexican actress, Eiza Gonzalez, plays another one of the physicists in the sho...she is beautiful and brilliant, but never sees the big picture on how to save humanity, causing a great deal of frustration while viewing. To make matters worse, the actress, for lack of a better term, should stick to modeling bikinis rather than playing such roles that are way above her pay grade. Go back to school, take some acting lessons and try again Miss Gonzalez. On the other hand, Liam Cunningham is brilliant leaving me yearning more and more of GOT's Davos.

This is a great show , people with expectations who have a history with the story , books , just want a recreation of the experience they created for themselves in their own minds. In terms of just being a show created for entertainment this is everything anyone could want, I had no idea what 3 Body Problem ever meant , I had heard of it but had no prior experience with the story.

As a "new" experience in terms of modern sci-fi this is excellent , covers all the facets required to keep me < at least< enthralled and binge watching into the early hours of the next day.

I have read a lot of the reviews which are just whining about their experience not being fulfilled because of expectations , what can we really expect these days ? I didn't expect this and am really happy for finding it and will be telling many more people to watch.

In world where sci-fi has become equivalent with "Let's hire every mediocre 3DFX artist out there, so they can postproduce every asset in this movie" and "A good narrative is for nerds"...

In a world where "the creator" exists and people for some reason think it is not the shallow, pitiable, grotestque husk of a long dead dream of good and entertaining Sci-Fi cinema...

In a world where "the creator" and "the three body problem" have nearly the same average ratings...

Yes, in this world, finally we have an entertaining, thought provoking show. The feeling of threat, dread, inevitability, absurdity, religious zeal and spiritual inspiration, doom, yet also struggle, hope, cleverness, sacrifice, the loss of innocence, moral dilemmas - all of those are real in this show.

There's barely anything to dislike in this show - it never feels oddly paced and is always fascinating to deep dive into the minds of the actors in this clever written and fascinating scenario.

Yes, you can ask yourself a lot of questions or point out how some things might be inconceivable or even stupid, however - it is never on the level of more recent offerings on the altar of entertainment, such as basically ALL OF STAR WARS since Kennedy with the exception of Andor.

This show is a must and I hope it receives many more seasons.