It has been a while since I updated my blog as between the four days holiday last week and heavy work load in the past few days, I was too busy and did not have the chance to write anything. But today, I finally had a bit of time, so I decided to write on this latest Netflix original series that I just finished last night.  OK, here's more on it.

Brief Story Line

When some scientists committed suicide without apparent reasons, Clarence (Benedict Wong - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Gemini Man etc) who worked for Strategic Intelligence Agency under Thomas Wade (Liam Cunningham - Way Down etc) was looking into the cases. His investigation led him to a group of briliant scientists that consisted of Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo - To Catch A Killer  etc), Jin Cheng (Jess Hong - The Brokenwood Mysteries etc), Auggie Salazar (Eiza González - Ambulance etc), Jack Rooney (John Bradley - Game of Thrones TV series etc) and Will Downing (Alex Sharp - The Trial of the Chicago 7 etc). They all used to work together assisting genius physicist Vera Ye (Vedette Lim) and were quite close with her mother Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao - The Joy Luck Club etc).

Things became dangerous for one of the scientists when she had a vision of countdown timer in front of her eyes. It would later be revealed that the unexplained deaths and countdown might be related to major events in the past which would impact the fate of the whole world. 

So what would happen to the scientists as they were unexpectedly involved in the mission to save the world? And what was the reason for the danger? You could find out in the first season of the series.

End of Brief Story Line

I was quite impressed after finishing the first season as I had no major difficulty in understanding the story, especially after reading a lot of comments before it was released that it was complicated and might be challenging for general audience to grasp. Though the first two episodes seemed to be moving in a rather slow pace, but I felt it was quite interesting and intriguing to find out where it was heading. The virtual games that were very important for the story developments were also intelligently shown and pretty exciting.

The third episode was where it became dark with a shocking ending. Subsequently the purpose of the story became clearer and ever since the sixth episode, we could see a change of tone in the series. Where the first five episodes focused more on the why, the rest focused on the how. Originally I thought that the whole 8 episodes would suffice to tell the whole story, but apparently it only touched some part of it.

For those who are not aware, the series was loosely adapted from Chinese novel titled The Three-Body Problem written by Liu Cixin (he wrote several short stories as well, including The Wandering Earth that was adapted into two hugely successful movies). The novel itself was the first part of Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy which was very highly praised and even got the Hugo Award (literary award for sci-fi and fantasy works). So if the series was well received by audience, we might get the chance to watch the adaptation of the second and third novel and see the conclusion.

I thought the cast here were nicely chosen. Although it's based on Chinese novel (with strong cultural reference), having various cast from different parts of the world made more sense as they were trying to solve global problem. Plus it still had plenty of actors and actresses of Chinese descent. Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were also few other support cast such as Marlo Kelly (Dare Me TV series etc) as the mysterious woman, Jonathan Pryce (All the Old Knives etc) as Mike Evans, Sameer Usmani as Jin Cheng's boyfriend Raj and few others. The series was developed by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss (co-creators of the famous Game of Thrones TV series) together with Alexander Woo (writer of True Blood TV series). No wonder they had few alumni of GoT series in here.

Although I did not really have problem understandIng the story, but the science part was not that easy. Even with full concentration, the 3 body problem probably need to be watched more than once to give me clear understanding (it's a bit embarassing cause this adaptation was said to have been dumbed down, especially compared to the Chinese 2023 series). Overall I still think this is interesting and smartly done sci-fi series with wonderful special effects. Although the story telling was good enough, but the science was a bit overwhelming and the drama did not feel that strong. I would have wished for a closure to the story though, so hopefully Netflix is willing to renew it.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars