Review: '3 Body Problem' richly rewards the demands it makes on your attention
The most eagerly anticipated TV event of the year is here. It's called "3 Body Problem" and its mesmerizing mind games will shake you up good.
Based on the first novel in the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy by Chinese author Liu Cixin, the eight-part series, now streaming on Netflix, rides in on Liu's reputation as a world-class sci-fi provocateur.
No less a fan than Barack Obama called the book "wildly imaginative." I'll say.
And if that isn't enough to rev you up, "3 Body Problem" is the first series from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss since they were crowned in Emmys for turning the epic novels of George R.R. Martin into the global HBO phenom known as "Games of Thrones."
But here's the thing: On page and now onscreen, "3 Body Problem" makes you work to solve its mysteries. If you slept through physics class, even the title can throw you. Do you know a three-body problem involves predicting the motion of three objects influenced by each other's gravity?
Stay with me. Reduced to its basics, the time-traveling series pivots around humanity preparing for an alien invasion not set to happen for another 450 years. Patience is required as the tale moves from the Chinese cultural revolution of the 1960s to England in the present.
Even working with Alexander Woo of "True Blood" and AMC's horror anthology "The Terror," Benioff and Weiss aren't ones to pander to short attention spans. Though they clear a path through the tangled thickets of the novel, they respect the scrappy intellect at play.
Are you up for it? No judgement here if you're not. One viewer's big-idea treatise is another's slow-acting poison. Though the series messes with Liu's sacrosanct text, the thinly drawn characters can't hold a candle to the rich vibrancy of those on "Thrones."
Don't get me wrong. The eye-popping spectacle is off the charts. But characters walk and talk like philosophical concepts instead of flesh-and-blood avatars of a world in crisis.
And despite the presence of such "GOT" actors as John Bradley, Liam Cunningham and Jonathan Pryce, "3 Body Problem" is as different from "Thrones" as Starks are from Lannisters.
At the center of the plot is scientist Ye Wenjie, played with ferocity and feeling by Zine Tseng and in adulthood by Rosalind Chao. Imprisoned by Mao Zedong after teaching forbidden theories of relativity and Big Bang, she sends a message into space to help save humans from themselves.
This all connects to present-day London, where a cop (the fabulous Benedict Wong) investigates a series of suicides among prominent scientists. In turn, this leads the cop to a group of former Oxford students (Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Eiza González, Jess Hong and Alex Sharp) known as the Oxford 5, and a virtual reality game being played to unlock the secrets of the universe.
Have I lost you? "3 Body Problem" makes Christopher Nolan's multidimensional "Inception" look like a kids game.
But this is a series that richly rewards the demands it makes on your attention.
"3 Body Problem" dreams big. Don't be afraid to join in.
