Like a lot of shows sadly the orginal series is more of an inspiration and used as nastagila bait rather than an actual retelling. There's an ongoing story with events and characters taken from the books but that's about as close as it gets.
As for how it came out, well, it's decent. The acting is above average, the characters and story lines dance between being ok and slightly cringe, but over all I'm enjoying it and curios to see how it ends. For anyone who read the series the person chosen to be the main villain is pretty obvious but still fun to see again. Over all I'd give it a 3.5.
as for the reviews on this sight, out of all the 1 star reviews I only found 4 that had legitimate concerns and the rest were just people crying that the show acknowledges gay people exist. In fact most of those "reviews" seem to have decided that all LGBT are now transgender for some reason (guess it's easier to fit their agenda since most people have no issue with the rest of the community these days).