TV series
Rating: 3. Rating scale: 0 to 5.
”3 body problem”
Series Creators: David Benioff, DB Weiss, Alexander Woo.
Regi: Derek Tsang, Andrew Stanton, Minkie Spiro, Jeremy Podeswa.
Cast: Benedict Wong, Jess Hong, Jovan Adepo, Eiza González, Liam Cunningham and others. 8 episodes x 50 min. Languages: English, Mandarin. Premiere on Netflix 21/3.
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Genocide, nuclear weapons, natural disasters, climate crises. Where are we going? There are probably many of us who sometimes just want to give up hope on humanity and press the restart button, but what guarantees are there not to repeat old mistakes? No, new thoughts and approaches are needed. Outside perspective.
Such is the thinking of Ye Wenjie, a brilliant young astrophysicist who has made himself impossible in Communist China. After the Cultural Revolution took her father’s life, she has ended up in captivity. On the secret sidelines of the space race, she tries to make contact with aliens. In the end, she succeeds, but after everything she has seen – betrayal, evil, violence and contempt for science – she is convinced that man is a failure. So she asks for help.
Many years later her invitation to invade has unforeseen consequences. In the present day, a murder mystery is uncovered in which galaxy brains go awry, whereupon Benedict Wong’s detectives gather evidence on behalf of a secret agency (led by Liam Cunningham). Threads and timelines are woven together into a compact ball. One minute problem solving takes place in a VR world, the next Jonathan Pryce is seen leading a doomsday sect. In between, love, sadness and intrigue are portrayed within a super-intelligent group of friends who turn out to be the blue planet’s last hope.
Ambitious “3 body problem”, based on Liu Cixin’s novel “Trekropparsproblemet” (recently published in Swedish translation by Anna Gustafsson Chen), is filled with moral dilemmas and disturbing images that are sometimes weakened by plastic computer animations. Behind the adaptation is the “Game of thrones” duo David Benioff and DB Weiss, in collaboration with the screenwriter Alexander Woo. There are no clear traces of the power struggle for Westeros. Luckily, perhaps, as “3 body problem” is not an equally genre-defining creation. It freely switches between micro and macro perspectives, intimate relationship descriptions and breathtaking mass death scenarios.
In the center stands an advanced headset of mysterious origin, with which invited users find themselves on a planet facing the so-called three-body problem. In this case: the inevitable chaos that ensues for a world with three suns. To use the old critic’s cliché, it feels a bit like watching someone else play a video game, neither very neat nor exciting, but the feature is short-lived – and ultimately serves an important function.
Instead of hooking up, “3 body problem” bets on variety. In the turns, however, some unevenness occurs. Even the best series can suffer from water-treading side stories, but here the problem lies rather in how certain crucial events and characters are glossed over. Some you barely have time to get hold of before they die (okay, a similarity to “Game of thrones”).
What gets lost in the tempo changes is, ironically, the human. Which is also part of the allure. Raffling thought experiments make the space exploration “3 body problem” worthy of a gold star. Or if it is the publisher’s author who deserves one? Because even if the series always makes you want to watch further, I can’t get away from the fact that the ideas are so much bigger than the execution.
Read other film and television reviews in DN and more texts by Sebastian Lindvall.