Every time I watch a show like this, it reminds me of Lost. I've never seen Lost but I do know they dragged it out and tacked a disappointing ending onto it. This feels like the sort of show that could go episodic like that. They try to find Vault-Tec, some other faction shows up and then they spend a whole season on that conflict and they've got one more season out of it.

But, not to focus on the negative, I felt like this captured the character of the games very well. The mixture of brutality and humour is done well, without going too far into Borderlands territory. It's a fun story, good characters and acting. It's all very Fallout and it did make me want to pick the game up.

There is a lot of filler though. In 8 episodes they still manage to pull out one whole episode where nothing happens (episode 4 I think?). I do still feel like it's worth watching overall, but a little disappointing that there wasn't enough story to spread out to 8 episodes.

Massive spoilers for both the books and the Netflix show here. If you're planning to ever read or watch either, please don't read this. If you have read the books and watched the show, forgive me any mis-remembering here, I guess!

Enjoyed this way more than I expected to. In places, especially with regard to character development and introduction, the book sometimes suffers from being planned as it was being written, I think. The absolutely crucial, pivotal character Luo Ji being unceremoniously inserted after the first book (I had to go back and check that Wang Miao and Luo Ji weren't the same character) was very jarring, and one of many symptoms of poor foresight and character development in the books.

Having all of the main character concepts visible from the start was a good move by the writers of the show, in my opinion. It allows them to be developed for longer, and to form proper attachments to them. I love that there's evidence of all the characters and their function in the story, spread across the whole cast. I see elements of AA and Cheng Xin in both Jin and Auggie, as well as Auggie obviously adopting most of Wang Miao's formative storyline in terms of nanotechnology. The story flows very well in the new Netflix characters.

I feel like these character adaptations must have taken such a long time to unpick and adapt, but it was worth doing, for me. It means that they left the story alone and focussed on how do we tell this story with these characters? What they've achieved there is quite remarkable. And the casting is excellent as well. Knowing what happens to Wade, Saul (Luo Ji), Auggie and Jin (Cheng Xin and AA), and Will (Yun Tianming), I feel like that's all going to be fun to watch and will make the central friendship group dynamic a lot more powerful by the end of Death's End.

The low-key star of the show is still Benedict Wong as Clarence (Da Shi). My reading of Da Shi was a lot higher energy than the resigned, sarcastic Clarence, but it works well for the tone of the character.

I hope Netflix renews this to cover the rest of the story. The visual implementation of the Panama Canal was absolutely amazing and I am excited to see what they do with the probe's first contact, the shadow colonies, 4D space collapse, Yun's resurrection and meeting with Cheng Xin, and the Neptune capsule.

I loved The Boys, and this somehow stands on its shoulders. Incredible storytelling and I love this universe. I was skeptical about this purely because of how much I enjoyed The Boys but no more. I will watch anything they put out relating to this. Best superhero show/anything ever.

I was skeptical about this, largely because I haven't seen anything half decent on Netflix for what seems like years. At least I know this was somewhat written by humans. At the very least it was conceived by humans.

But I liked it. I mean it's extremely contrived in that way that Guy Ritchie does best, and it has one or two glaring holes in the form of absolute liabilities you just would've sacked or killed, but it was fun. I don't think I'll watch it again when I could watch the film, though.

I think about this show at least once a day. Absolutely beautiful retro paranoid sci-fi thriller.

Super American, and a mercifully short first season. Stuff like this has a tendency to get dragged out and serialised and I'm glad this doesn't suffer from that (lookin' at you; Mentalist, Numb3rs et al). Decent story with some good twists and turns. Nothing too thinky going on.

There's going to be a couple of obvious and not-recent TV shows here (definitely didn't just write this to get the ball rolling in this category!) but whenever I think about my favourite TV shows, this is always so high on the list.

If you haven't already seen it, I suppose it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to convince you here, but it's the perfect period drama. The characters, costumes, and story are all absolutely wonderful.

The first time I started watching it, something about it made me uncomfortable and tense and I didn't get further than the first few episodes, but I watched it again on my turbo trainer and turned my unease into a calorie burn and ended up absolutely loving this show.