I have not read the books but I've heard they're well done and I know that this was heavily adapted with the setting changing from China to London and the main character being split into five characters among other things.
But not having read the books and watching this show, I'm just astonished this was the final result. Caveat that these are just my opinions, I don't want to ruin it for anyone so I really wasn't going to get into it. So stop reading if you liked it or haven't watched it yet... HOWEVER, since y'all want to know... The script seems to have been written by an algorithm or at the very least someone with a very tenuous grip on the English language. Either that or it was so heavily edited in order to make it fit into 8 episodes that it borders on unintelligible. The characters do not speak like actual humans, they jump in and out of topics, emotions, motivations at the drop of a hat with almost zero connecting fibres between them. They're all almost completely one dimensional save for the main antagonist who at least has enough screen time and back story to give us a small amount of insight into their motivations (Dr Wenjie). And this makes sense because from my understanding she's the one main character who was taken wholesale from the book. The gaggle of scientists created for the show are paper thin and completely forgettable from to scene.
The rules for the universe that are created within the show are ignored almost immediately within the same scene in order to further the plot, completely ignoring that they just got through explaining that none of the actions they are currently taking make one iota of sense or should even be possible considering the rules they just established. It's a very simple story that's presented within the show and yet they're incapable of progressing the plot without tripping over their own plot devices.
I feel sorry for the actors because most of them come off horribly which really isn't their fault as they had almost nothing to work with script wise. But some of the performances are just terrible, the lead scientist probably coming off the worst (Gonzalez) but aside from Wong, Bradley and Chao the rest of the mains are pretty painful, but again, a lot of that is scripting.
I'm not going to waste any more time on it but I'm stunned after all that money this is what they came up with. Especially when from watching it it's hard to actually see where most of this money went.
