From someone who has basic knowledge of the original Roswell series, I can say that I like the grittier take to the original. The original Roswell series was made back in the 90's where it was more common to be campy and not touch on hard subjects so much as opposed to how TV shows are doing today.
Roswell New Mexico is feeding from political pools, character diversity pools, and many others while trying to maintain the integrity of the show it's trying to reboot. Yeah, the relationship between Max and Liz went from zero to sixty in half a second without there being any previous feelings shown from the two in the past wherein Michael and Alex had previous feelings to trampoline from.
But, over all, this series makes itself easy to watch. I quite enjoyed the first season and I can't wait for the second one.