I started watching this series with very little information. All I knew was that there was a book with the same title that was generating some heat.

I don’t usually follow literary trends, but the promo images on Netflix looked very promising. So one day I was browsing around on my TV and decided to give it a try.

And I’m glad I did!

The series is beautiful. The visual effects are stunning. The plot is not far behind either.

In the beginning, the plot jumps around different decades and countries, until all the characters and pieces fall into place. The main plot is the death of prominent scientists, who start seeing strange numbers counting down in front of them.

To add even more to the mystery a highly advanced game emerges, an ultra-real virtual reality in which the player is on a strange planet inhabited by historic figures, such as Kublai Khan. With each cycle, something terrible happens to the planet, such as being engulfed in snow storms or destroyed by extreme heat. The players are tasked with finding what’s wrong and fixing it.

And so the plot evolves around these mysteries. The series also has some really well-constructed dialogues. Detective Da Shi’s (Benedict Wong) sarcasm is one of the highlights.

The series was based on the book trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, written by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The Three-Body Problem is actually the name of the first book. The trilogy was deemed non-adaptable, due to its non-linear plot and the complexity of the universe built by the author.

Creators David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo were able to turn it into a series by putting the main elements in chronological order. So the story you see on Netflix is pulled from all 3 books. They also changed the setting of the main events from China to London, which might upset a few fans.

But the differences don’t stop there. The main characters, the group of 5 friends that go through most of the tribulations together, don’t exist like that in the book. Most of them are composed of traits of different characters.

I’ve never read the book, so to me, that doesn’t make that much of a difference. But I can imagine how that might disappoint some of the trilogy fans. Nevertheless, this is a great series. I’m giving it a 4.5 because I was not particularly fond of some of the technology and ideas that started to emerge in the last episode. I’ll stop here, this is a spoiler-free review.

This is the kind of series that makes me want to dive into its universe after it’s over. I don’t think I’ll read the books (I’m getting to the conclusion that Sci-Fi is better on the screen), but I’ve been consuming anything related to that, from explanations of the physics behind it to interviews with the cast and creators. 

I can’t wait for season 2. It hasn’t been officially confirmed yet, but it looks like it could come by the end of 2025.

Here are some interesting links:

• Interview with the creators
• Top 10 differences between the books and the series
• Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the 3 body problem
• Top 10 bits of true science in the series