The Three-Body Problem

I read Cixin Liu's series a couple of times in 2019 and 2020 and was blown away. . .so excited this show finally came out after the release date kept on getting delayed.

It's good that this show came out of a Chinese production company and captures the "feel" of the Cixin Liu's books very well so far. . .binge worthy watching all the episodes on WeTV.

The cast, acting and character development have been superb so far and the story has not been "watered down", "messed with" or "dumbed down" for the average viewer who hasn't read Cixin Liu's books. I would hate to see Netflix dissecting the story to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator (who have a hard time perhaps understanding the concepts in the stories) . . .and it will be interesting nonetheless with more of the characters not being Chinese in the Netflix version (to see if they can keep the "feel" of the story being told from a Chinese protagonist point of view . . . Time will tell.

The only problem I have with it is that the English subtitles flash by too quickly which some viewers will find off-putting and hard to catch. . .If they could hold the English subtitles on the screen longer, I would have given this a solid 9 for rating.

Loyal to the original work, restored most of the content, and made a small part of changes aimed at film and television. Except for the segment of the unscrupulous reporter, which is disappointing, other segments are very pleasant. In particular, the part about Hong'an Base starts from the original work and is higher than the original work. Even those who have not read the book "Three Bodies" can easily understand the plot with a little scientific literacy and curiosity. This film and television work may be an opportunity for you to understand "Three Bodies", Liu Cixin and science fiction works. It is very good to compare the animation of the Bili Bili version.

One difficulty of book adaptations is it will never play out perfectly as it would in each reader's mind. Of course the show won't live up to the masterpiece that is Three Body Problem. That kind of scifi epic only happens ever so often; one's that can be adapted to a show even rarer. However, the show stays true to "show, don't tell", and despite some negligible flawed, eager ensemble acting, as well as a few examples of over-exaggerated editing here and there, it incorporates much of the content from the books while adding much non-cgi visually impressive elements to enrich the shows format as a visual medium. One aspect I especially enjoyed was the main cast. The casting for major characters also reflects the books surprisingly well, and the acting of major characters deserve to be applauded.

Overall, watch this show. It's engaging, aesthetically pleasing, and retains most of Liu Cixin's psychological mind-bending science fiction masterpiece.

The casting is great and really fits my imagination when I read the novel (except that Shi Qiang needs to be a little more muscular). The story was beyond imagination, really epic, and it's not about one single country or one single culture, you can see every nation, every race united together when facing danger. The TV series tried to make everything the same as the book. One star was deducted because the pacing of story telling, all the flashbacks and neon lights scenes are a bit annoying and confusing, when not everyone knows the background of the story. Although the novel itself was arranged in this way, I think there should be some adaptations when you making it a TV series.

Based on the first 8 episodes, this is a non-spoiler short review.

First off, I would recommend this to anyone interested in engaging sci fi.

Watching this show gave me the same feeling as watching the Game of Thrones premiere back in the day after having read the books. The feeling that there is nothing quite like this on TV elsewhere.

Unlike the gritty fantasy land of Westeros however, you are thrown into contemporary China, where a series of mysterious events is tearing apart the scientific community. As the mystery slowly unfolds (and I do mean slowly), your mind is put at work by a plethora of speculative science fiction concepts. It is an absolute treat.

Not only is Three Body a remarkable 1 for 1 adaptation, but stretches out and develops certain elements even further than the book. Sometimes to great effect when it comes to character development. Liu Cixin's books are often criticized for their wooden characters and this show adds a much needed dash of color to the cast. However, this also leads to it dragging on unnecessarily on certain plot threads, creating serious pacing issues in a few episodes.

I'm not very familiar with Chinese dramas and I understand there is ad money to be concerned about, but you know you have a problem when even the audiobook moves the story along at a faster pace than this show. Sequences that could be handled in 30 seconds take up to 5 minutes or more.

Sometimes not every single thing needs to be said out loud and I really wish all the fat could have been left in the editing room. I've heard this was originally planned as a 24, instead of 30 episode series and I feel even that would be stretching it.

Other jarring issues include awkward English speaking sections, as well as the omittance of names of other countries (instead of "America" or "Britain", we are bizarrely treated to "Country T" and "Country M"), I assume this has to do with censorship around contemporary politics.

The show can also suffer from the quirks of Asian drama such as poor editing and while it never falls on soap opera territory, it will sometimes come dangerously close to that line.

At 8 to 10 episodes, I'm sure the Netflix version will have a much tighter pace, though it will certainly not cover the book in the same detail. I believe making this a 20 or 15 episode series would have been the optimal choice for any version.