In 1960s China, during the Cultural Revolution, an astrophysicist is conscripted to work on a top-secret radio telescope, and in 2024, a group of young physicists are baffled by anomalies in the world’s particle accelerators, while an investigator tries to piece together events connecting a series of mysterious suicides.

I should start with a disclaimer. I haven’t read any of Liu Cixin’s original ‘Three Body’ Science Fiction trilogy, nor have I seen the earlier Chinese TV series, so I come to the material completely fresh, hopefully able to assess this new iteration, from the creative team behind Game of Thrones, purely on its own merits…

…which are many.

This is a very strong season opener. From the riveting pre-credits sequence, as a young Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) witnesses her father’s vicious humiliation in front of a crowd of Maoist zealots, to physicist Auggie (Eliza González) and her mysterious midnight appointment with the skies over modern-day Oxford, the episode unfolds its multiple strands and timelines with clarity and confidence.

We also have the ever-reliable Benedict Wong, as investigator Da Shi, trying to make sense of a series of bloody deaths, while we are introduced to Auggie’s friends, Saul (Jovan Adepo), Jack (John Bradley),  and Jin Cheng (Jess Hong). Jonathan Pryce and Liam Cunningham both make their own brief enigmatic appearances, promising plenty of sci-fi skullduggery to come.

There’s a lot to take in, but the story-telling is razor sharp and the script is remarkably devoid of clunky info-dump.

There also needs to be a shout out to the VFX team. So much CGI these days is on the ropey side (possibly because the FX houses are so over-worked, and producers/directors expect too much from them) it’s great to see an FX heavy TV show which doesn’t look ‘painted’. The Chinese strand is particularly well lit, capturing the bleached out dusty colours of Eastern China with meticulous perfection.

If I have one caveat it’s with the scientists’ negative response to the anomalous behaviour of their particle accelerators. The young eggheads I know (my daughter has a PhD from Oxford) find anything that challenges scientific orthodoxy terrifically exciting. They would never be this gloomy about such a thing, but, hey, perhaps that’s not the stuff of drama.

Verdict: A confident, expertly executed and hugely entertaining series opener that has me excited to get stuck in to the rest of the series. 9/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com