The first adventure for Percy Jackson…

Percy Jackson has too often been the also ran against Harry Potter. The original films followed on and the books, although bestsellers, have also often been overshadowed.

This has always been unfair because Rick Riordan, the author behind all these stories, has produced something inclusive, heart warming and full of fun and adventure. Not only that but they aren’t fixated on class, the strange myths around the UK private school system and don’t have a toxic creator attached to them.

Certainly those who’ve read the books tend to regard them with an affection bordering on mania (certainly in this house).

The announcement of the Disney+ series was met with some trepidation because the films were not very good – and they were not very good in precisely the way of big screen adaptations that miss the entire point of the original text.

Starring Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri as the central trio of Percy, Annabeth and Grover respectively, the show does a fantastic job of giving them space to be the characters known in the books. Beyond that and on its own terms it’s a great adventure taking in an updated (at times) and interesting look at the nature of gods and mortals and how they might interact and reflect one another. In this it hoves close to the ideas the ancient Greeks had about their gods while doing a good job of making that relevant to us today.

More interestingly is that it doesn’t get bogged down in school terms or bullies or other myths about how adults think young people spend their time.

The heroes in Percy Jackson are busy trying to save the world but that’s very much a secondary endeavour. Really they’re interested in getting out from underneath adult control, away from lives where they’ve been ill fit and trying to figure out the kind of people they want to be.

Percy’s central quest is, really, to figure out why he’s got the life he’s got. For many people answering that question is central to finding meaning even if the answer can all too often be summed up as ‘this is what happened and now we’re here.’

There’s definitely anger here, frustration with the world as he finds it. There’s also the resignation (but not passivity) that there’s little he can do to change it. This too is something too often missed by people writing about those without power. More common is that those same young people are somehow secret power houses here to overturn our ideas with sheer force of will.

If Percy, Annabeth and Clover sometimes find their way out of trouble a little too conveniently that’s fine for me. The challenges they face are big but they’re also secondary to the real challenge here – finding their place in the world.

By the end of the series both Percy and Grover have taken big steps towards that goal while Annabeth is left pretty much where she began in terms of her circumstances. Having said that, Annabeth is the one who gets to do the most thinking, the most reflection on who she is and the life she’s been handed. If the others move forwards externally, Annabeth does a lot of interesting thinking about who she is and who she wants to be.

There’s plenty left on the table unresolved for everyone. It doesn’t feel like a gaping hole in the story which wraps up neatly on its own terms but we definitely have questions about family dynamics, the politics of what kind of society you want and what it means to choose your own path. And I’d like to see a little more of Percy’s anger because it’s there under the surface but is too frequently treated as something to be assuaged and mollified not welcomed and understood.

Verdict: Percy Jackson deserves your time and certainly the time of the young people in your house. It’s excellent storytelling, full of fun, adventure and spectacle with some brilliant actors across the many roles that make this feel like a fully fleshed out world.

The framing is uneven – but the worst of it feels no worse than average television. At its best Percy Jackson feels cinematic and it’s lovely to see this kind of care shown towards what could be dismissed as children’s television.

It’s not. It’s action and thrills for the whole family and I can warmly recommend it as such.

Rating? 8 choices out of 10.

Stewart Hotston