- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 21, 2024
Critic Reviews
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Six episodes in, sometimes 3 Body Problem seems immense, other times a tad too similar to other Netflix time/dimension-bending fare (1899, Bodies, et al).
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This one doesn’t disappoint in the visual grandeur department. The VR scenes are particularly spectacular. .... But this show is a project of ideas, and I could never quite shake the aura of abstraction at its core.
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A collection of mysteries that, while rarely boring, is too untidy to consistently grip the imagination.
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It looks great, it soon has Jonathan Pryce joining proceedings as Mike Evans, an eco activist turned reclusive oil tycoon billionaire, and the answers to the mystery of who (and what) the extraordinary forces are, what they want and who summoned them are doled out at a fair pace. But it can’t quite get rid of the cold abstraction that was at the heart of the books and which is revered by its fans.
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A glorious, gaudy galactic mess. Problems? Loads of them. But marvel at the ambition.
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The problem is that these new characters are never integrated with Liu’s story in a way that makes sense. Instead of making the globe-spanning plot empathetic on a human level, these friends’ various interpersonal entanglements just end up feeling irrelevant in the face of the show’s big ideas.
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They [David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo] tackle the project with admirable seriousness and a focus on world-building — skills sharpened in their previous work — and yet the deliberate pacing and overall results are strangely underwhelming.
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The expansive spectacle of the “3 Body Problem” and the awe it occasionally produces is often hindered by its inherently middling human melodramas and tortuous plotting.
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The series isn’t devoid of good stuff. It’s just flat, with decorative touches, which extends to the characterizations and acting. Nobody in the ensemble is bad, but very few performances are memorable.
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Benioff, Weiss and Woo made radical and transformative changes to the source material, but lost something integral in the process. We’re left with a series that’s full of bluster but no vibrancy – a body devoid of life.
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Benioff, Weiss, and Woo (a longtime writer on True Blood and the creator of Season Two of AMC’s horror anthology The Terror) have done everything they can to blend the big ideas from the books with people who have clear personalities and inner lives, rather than ones who exist entirely as plot functionaries. But even with these various smart deviations from the source material, the show’s first season is middling drama at best.
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