TV Review: 3 Body Problem starts well - but it's unclear what's even happening

Jess Hong in 3 Body Problem.

Netflix’s latest offering, 3 Body Problem, starts brilliantly. We’re in China during the Counter-Revolution and a physicist is being ordered to renounce the Theory of Relativity as imperialist Western propaganda, in front of a crowd of students baying for blood.

They get it when the physicist is beaten to death, while his daughter watches on in horror. She is sent to a prison camp in the depths of Mongolia, at the bottom of a hill topped by a mysterious-looking military installation.

Then the story jumps forward to modern-day England, where a group of physicists are apparently taking their own lives. 

I don’t mind this jump to another world. 3 Body Problem is from the people who gave us Game of Thrones and both shows are based on a series of best-selling fantasy-history novels. But Game of Thrones worked because it had the same tone across different locations.

Here, the young physicists’ sure-fire dialogue makes it feel like The Big Bang Theory, only worse, and I never thought that was possible. It doesn’t help that the leader of the pack, Auggie Salazar, is an even better-looking version of Keira Knightley, and I didn’t think that was possible either. 

Liam Cunningham in 3 Body Problem.

I’m not suggesting a gorgeous physicist is stretching credibility, but she seemed more like a movie star and neither the script nor the acting does enough to change my mind. So I don’t care enough about her or the rest of the gang to wonder what might happen to them.

It doesn’t help that it’s not clear what is actually happening to them. There is a countdown clock and we’re told bad things happen if that ever gets to zero. 

A couple of cops, including one played by Liam Cunningham, are trying to figure out why the physicists are killing themselves. There are aliens in here somewhere. I got to the end of the first episode not really sure what I was watching.

In fairness, I don’t usually like sci-fi shows. But we’re rewatching Stranger Things with our daughter and the first episode is a cracker; real characters you can get on board with and enough of a story to get you hooked.

There is hardly any of that here. My wife is the sci-fi fan in our house so I left her to watch the second episode alone. She won’t be watching a third. 

According to her, the story went bonkers in episode two, but not in a good way, and Auggie Salazar was still causing credibility problems. I’d love to have watched a show just about that mystery installation in China. But the bright young physicists got in the way.