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.
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.
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