John Argus

Where can one start with an 'adaptation' as badly done and politically motivated as this? Let's leave all that out. Let's leave out that the strong male characters developed and growing through the novels have been reduced to impotent cardboard cutouts with nothing to do. Let's leave out all the blackwashing, the substitution of black, brown and Asian characters for the originally described ones because... just because. Let's leave out the invention and insertion of GLBT themes done so very awkwardly. Let's instead just look at the quality of the show. It'll be a quick look. There isn't any. The sets are embarrassingly cheap, akin to something out of a B movie. They're so bad you can recognize one set for another as they change ctiies. Same street, just different lighting and decoration. Speaking of lighting - very badly done, probably in an effort to hide the cheap sets. Costumes? High school play level. Writing? Generally awful. Character dialogue resembling CW teen dramas, massive plot holes, absurd coincidences, the characters doing ridiculous things which make no sense on any level and are never explained. Lack of explanation of just what is going on, or the background to all of the actions. Horrible dialogue, and a nearly complete lack of character development or believality in the characters. Finally, there is simply nothing about this 'adaptation' that resembles the original other than the names of the characters. Not a single scene is taken properly from the books, nor even any dialogue. The writers of this show have virtually no experience writing anything of substance, but have a sense of smug superiority in their own prose over the original author who sold tens of millions of books. They are embarrassingly bad, and only the lack of experience of the execs at Amazon allowed this to be put out in its present state.