While I'm planning to keep watching, the series did not get off to a very good start. The production values are good, the casting is solid. What bothers me is the writing.
My perspective is as a fan of the book, so I can't really speak to the experience of seeing the series just for its own sake. For me, the series has to maintain the essential qualities of the book that made it such a good story. So far, the TV adaptation is failing in two of them.
One: It is gratuitously violent. In the first episode, there are, literally, buckets of blood. There is simply no narrative reason for it, and no more room for dramatic contrast, since they've already bathed the viewers in gore.
Two: What carries the book for me is Shadow's character. He's a very interesting guy. He has had time to think in prison. He doesn't want to go back. He's developed the thoughtfulness and the discipline to be a calm center, trying to find his place in a world that just gets weirder and weirder. This Shadow, who now has the last name of "Moon" (why?) is easy to provoke. He comes off more as a thug who has come out of prison still a thug. Compare the book to the TV version of his first meeting with Mad Sweeney. He claims to have read many many books so he could come back to his wife a better man, but he sure doesn't act like all that reading made much of an impression.
My perspective is as a fan of the book, so I can't really speak to the experience of seeing the series just for its own sake. For me, the series has to maintain the essential qualities of the book that made it such a good story. So far, the TV adaptation is failing in two of them.
One: It is gratuitously violent. In the first episode, there are, literally, buckets of blood. There is simply no narrative reason for it, and no more room for dramatic contrast, since they've already bathed the viewers in gore.
Two: What carries the book for me is Shadow's character. He's a very interesting guy. He has had time to think in prison. He doesn't want to go back. He's developed the thoughtfulness and the discipline to be a calm center, trying to find his place in a world that just gets weirder and weirder. This Shadow, who now has the last name of "Moon" (why?) is easy to provoke. He comes off more as a thug who has come out of prison still a thug. Compare the book to the TV version of his first meeting with Mad Sweeney. He claims to have read many many books so he could come back to his wife a better man, but he sure doesn't act like all that reading made much of an impression.