One Of The Greatest Sci-Fi Novels Gets The Brazenly Nerdy Adaptation It Deserves

“All the physics of the last 60 years is wrong. Science is broken,” a despondent physics prodigy laments early on in the present-day storyline. For a show that could’ve collapsed underneath the weight of all the existential ideas and capital-letter Themes on its mind, “3 Body Problem” takes a fairly straightforward path to kick the plot in motion. A rash of suicides within the scientific community have taken place within an alarmingly short period of time, perhaps connected to research and experiments gone haywire that have confounded the best and brightest minds. In short, this genre-bender begins with the most classic one of all: a murder mystery.

Gently coaxing viewers into the action before things take a turn for the surreal is a deceptively clever adaptation choice, as is the presence of our main quintet of characters nicknamed the Oxford Five. In the most controversial, yet effective change made to the material, none of them are exact representations of the various characters from the book. Instead, the writers compress the centuries-spanning timeline of “The Three-Body Problem” and its following two sequels, streamlining the actions, personalities, and narrative functions of multiple protagonists (many of whom never even meet one another) into a group of close-knit friends we can follow throughout season 1 and beyond. Of the five, “Game of Thrones” alum John Bradley makes a big impression playing against type as cocky millionaire Jack Rooney, along with standouts Jess Hong as Jin Cheng and Eiza González as Auggie Salazar. (For both Jovan Adepo as Saul Durand and Alex Sharp as Will Downing, their best material comes later in the season.) By avoiding a direct 1:1 translation of the book(s), “3 Body Problem” acknowledges what were deeply insular stories that thrived on interiority in their written form and shifts things outward among its ensemble cast, providing a much more natural flow of information, reveals, and character development — all tailored for a visual medium.

The final result is a genuine feat of adaptation, raising the bar sky-high for how to embrace the spirit of the source material without staying rigidly attached to it. But much more importantly, “3 Body Problem” fully understands how to use the medium of television to tell the best possible story it can. In short, it’s a breath of fresh air in a streaming era suffocated by so many shows that seem embarrassed to be shows.