Does Netflix's 3 Body Problem live up to the hype?

The new Netflix series 3 Body Problem debuted yesterday with some high expectations attached. 

Based on a novel called The Three-Body Problem written by Chinese scientist Liu Cixin, this new TV series from the creators of the original Game of Thrones series that ran from 2011 to 2019. Since that series' end, people have been rushing to call any epic "the new Game of Thrones," from the spinoff show House of Dragon, to the historical epic, Shogun. 

3 Body Problem is the first show created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in five years. The book was previously adapted in 2023 into a Chinese TV series. 

How does this adaptation of Liu's The Three-Body Problem stack up against the Chinese adaptation from last year?

Film and TV writers Rad Simonpillai, Leila Latif and Cassie Cao join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion to break down what the Netflix series got right, and what it got very wrong.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a chat about Ramy Youssef's upcoming stand-up special More Feelings and Sydney Sweeney's nun horror flick Immaculate, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

Now, there's a new documentary by Investigation Discovery called Quiet on Set that unveils what it was like behind the scenes at these beloved kids TV shows. The documentary raises questions about the ethics of kids TV and how to protect young people in Hollywood.

Joining host Elamin Abdelmahmoud on Commotion to talk more about these new revelations are Scaachi Koul and Michael Seater. Koul was involved in the production of Quiet on Set and Seater is a producer, director and former child actor. He played Derek from the hit Canadian teen comedy Life With Derek.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, plus a BONUS EPISODE on how the new changes to the Griffin Poetry Prize might be hurting Canadian poets, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Rad, It unfortunately falls to you to explain the storyline of 3 Body Problem. I know it's complicated, but can you give us your best shot in terms of setting up what this show is?   

Rad: The show begins in 1966 China. We meet a young woman whose family is being persecuted by the Maoist revolution. She is probably the most interesting or most compelling character in the series because she's witnessing her family being persecuted for believing and for promoting Western science. Somehow her story connects to a bunch of scientists in the modern day who turn up dead. 

Then we meet a bunch of H&M model looking scientists. It falls on them to figure it out. Why are people dying? Why is this mysterious clock appearing in front of their eyes? Why are we getting communications from outer space? Why is this virtual reality game really, really virtual? And what does this all have to do with the end of the world as we know it?

Elamin: So when you pull all these threads together, for you, does it add up to a satisfying show? 

Rad: No. Listen, I'm mad at you actually. I was ready to call it quits after the first episode. Then I found out you all wanted to talk about it. So then I had to go and put more hours into this just to figure out what's going on. So I got to the part where I get it — I see the matrix. Now I understand what's going on. That's how far I got into this show. And let me tell you, no, it is not any better. I mean certainly, there is interesting science and ideas in this show that's adapted from the novel, but it's a bit like The Matrix where there's a lot of withholding information, for the first bit. I mean, the best thing that these Game of Thrones creators can come up with in terms of building compelling characters as they all want to sleep with each other. And that's it. Sorry, that wasn't enough to hold me to this science. 

Elamin: Leila, what kind of expectations do you think are placed on them on the show? And do you think the show actually manages to meet those expectations?

Leila: I get the challenge of adapting the unadaptable novel. Watching this, I am in agreement that sometimes things just shouldn't be adapted. You lose so much of it. I think all of this earlier stuff in Maoist China is actually very interesting. But when you watch something where the science is so complicated, you get a sense that nobody making the show gets the science either. So it doesn't make you feel dumb, it makes the whole thing feel dumb.

Elamin: The book was written by a scientist. It was not a novelist who was like, "Let me invent some science." It was a scientist who was like, "Let me write a novel." I have not read the book, but a lot of the commentary that I've seen from people who have is like, "the book is quite dense." 

The show's attempts to cram all the science is inelegant because the book is inelegant about the amount of science that is actually carried off in the text. Rad and Leila both talked about Maoist China and how the story treats it. I think that's interesting, Cassie, because 3 Body Problem has history, right? It's a 2008 Chinese sci-fi novel. Last year it got adapted into a TV series in China where the book is set, and then this Netflix version is like "We're going to make it international." So instead of it being set in China, it's set internationally. How do you think that impacts the storytelling? 

Cassie: First of all, I resent that we keep saying it's an unadaptable novel, but it has been very successfully adapted just last year by Chinese media. 

The Chinese adaptation is highly well-rated and solves all of the problems that people are saying with this new Netflix series. But also, I did think that the Cultural Revolution timeline story was interesting in that we don't usually get to see that stuff on television. And I think with the broadening of adapting international IP, we get to see things like that that we don't normally see in Western media. However, I thought it was very cartoony. I thought that, given that there's no context in the Western world of what the Cultural Revolution even was about other than, "communists are bad." It was treated, I think, very politically flippantly and given no context. And then when you strip the rest of the show from its Chinese context, it gives even less. Every 15 minutes, you get to watch a little scene about how communists are bad with no other greater context. And then it also removes, I think, the rest of the show from that timeline, because none of it has any impact on how that society moved forward.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman