citizenstrane

I won't major on the racial themes of the show, as I understand the desire to make something that feels as socially relevant to today's world as the threat of nuclear war with Russia would have felt in the 80s, but I do feel that some serious shoehorning was carried out on the source material to make it fit this new narrative. Some of this seemed unnecessary to me, though I didn't find it particularly offensive, as this seems like a new vision of the Watchmen world, which I'm ok with. Overall I found the show compelling enough to want to find out what happened next, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it per se. I suppose I admired the craft, as it looks beautiful and is well acted, but there was something missing: maybe I just didn't care too much about the characters (apart from Looking Glass, who is a great original character). My main gripes are: 1. The mischaracterisation of the few characters used from the source material. In the book Laurie was nothing like the wise-cracking FBI agent she is here, Veidt wasn't a lunatic egomaniac and Dr Manhattan had forgotten about love as a concept he couldn't engage with anymore. 2. Sooo many characters and plot points just abandoned at various points. 3. Jeremy Irons' accent. It's all over the place. 4. Dreadful sound mixing. I had to turn my TV way up to hear the mumbled dialogue, then nearly got deafened by sound effects and music.

This show has been very up and down by pretty much every metric. The pace seems to speed up and slow down, with long stretches of very little happening but then new developments frantically thrown into the mix. I understand the producers crammed two books into one series which accounts for the weird pacing, and two investigations happening (which gets confusing and they bog each other down). The script also had some well-written funny moments, but then the very next scene will feature horrible dialogue. Hard to blame the actors, who do a good job in the main, but a lot of their emotions seem turned up to 11 all the time, which is exhausting and not hugely realistic. The characters' behaviour is downright bizarre at times. Coppers lose their rag constantly and seem to have no idea how to run an investigation that is remotely effective or follows any kind of professional standards. The plotting is also all over the place and requires some pretty major suspension of disbelief over daft left turns and enormous coincidences. All that said, I find myself needing to watch the final episode to see if they can wrap it all up in a way that isn't either a total cop-out or just a daft resolution that comes out of left field.