3 Body Problem lands on Netflix with plenty of hype. It is the first (completed) project from showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss since the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, a show so popular that every big budget series since has been designed, in some way, to mirror its success. Benioff and Weiss – with the addition of True Blood writer Alexander Woo – are once again trying their luck with an adaptation, this time eyeing up 2008’s bestselling sci-fi novel from Chinese author Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem. That book, the first in a trilogy, has sold millions and attracted very famous fans (Obama likes it, though he turned down a cameo in this series, which was probably the right decision). And it has already been adapted for the small screen: Chinese streamer Tencent debuted its 30-episode version, Three-Body, last January. Suddenly that hype begins to look suspiciously like something altogether weightier: baggage.
Netflix plumped for eight episodes to tell the same story which, once I tell you the premise, may sound ambitious. We start with a bloody scene set during China’s Cultural Revolution, in which a physicist Ye Wenjie (an astute performance by Zine Tseng) watches the public execution of her father, who has been teaching university students about scientific topics deemed unacceptable by the ruling party. In order to escape a similar fate, she begins working on a covert government mission, which is where trouble starts with some ominous satellite communication.
And then we are in present-day London, as gruff, chain-smoking Clarence Shi (Benedict Wong, leagues above most of his co-stars) investigates a string of suicides among high-profile scientists, who have been desperately scribbling countdowns on their walls. Meanwhile, a bunch more scientists, who met while studying at Oxford, reunite after their professor takes her own life. Auggie (Eiza González), pursuing a promising career in nanotechnology, has started to see countdowns too. Oh and Jin (Jess Hong) has become hooked on an immersive VR game in which… she has to combat adverse weather conditions to save an ancient civilisation?
“Science is broken,” says their disgruntled former classmate Saul (Jovan Adepo), late at night at his desk, and it is hard to disagree, though I would add that science is a little boring to watch play out on television.
Still, I should have known. The clue is in the title, which refers to an unsolved problem in physics and mathematics about the movement of three objects in gravitational orbit, though I am sure you knew that already. To the showrunners’ credit, as the series progresses, the science streamlines, and you begin to take the characters at their word rather than seeking an in-depth explanation, which reminded me of many school science lessons: you can keep up, probably pass the class, but you will not leave entertained.
It may disappoint you to discover – and this is revealed in the first episode but avert your eyes if you’re precious about spoilers – that aliens are behind all this. They’re coming to Earth! They’re having issues on their home planet! Have we seen this one before? And so, the ‘sci’ gives way to the ‘fi’. But these aliens are not due for a few centuries and therein lies a genuinely interesting question: what should these humans do in this time before our visitors arrive? How do you make people give a damn about such a threat?
Unfortunately, and here is the great disappointment of the series, it is difficult to care about what any of these characters think about this. Benioff and Weiss, so adept at using characters to deploy exposition, have likely gotten too good at it: most of these characters are little more than a bullet point in a textbook, simply present to convey a theoretical problem or explain a scientific term. And their surroundings, with the exception of Sixties China, are exasperatingly dull. Oxford and London, fairly distinctive filming locations, look like stock footage. Nowhere is more boring than the immersive videogame, which you enter through silvery headsets. Those landscapes change according to character: Jin travels to see Emperor Zhou at his pyramid while Jack (Thrones alum John Bradley) is thrown into Renaissance England. Whatever the time period, these worlds are realised with all the visual flair of an advertisement for a mobile game.
Towards the end of the first episode, Auggie and Saul sit in a college quad to stargaze. Auggie has been warned by a shadowy figure – lots of those in this show! – that something major is about to happen. And sure enough, the night sky starts flashing before their eyes. “I observe the universe winking,” says Saul (a quick litmus test for potential viewers is whether or not you can tolerate such a line, delivered, as it is, in an entirely earnest manner). Saul quickly realises that the flashes are a kind of code. Ah yes, it’s the same countdown that’s been plaguing Auggie all episode! D’uh! 3 Body Problem is frequently like this: we build to a climax only to discover something we already know, a disorientating series of failed stake-raising and missed big swings that do not leave you intrigued, only incurious.
‘3 Body Problem’ is available to watch on Netflix
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
