Shōgun
, the original, by Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune, was born to be “the new
Roots
”, the millionaire audience of the series about slavery caused all the networks to want a television adaptation of a best-selling book. An attempt is made to extract sequels from any success, sometimes based on misleading premises such as “the new one” or “from the authors of.” Series with so much personality like
Murder One
or
Picket Fences
had a hard time shaking off the “new
Twin Peaks
” label. Even
Doctor in Alaska
was sold as “a Twin Peaks for normal people.” Not even Lynch himself was able to get rid of the ruse and
On the Air
, his entertaining tribute to the beginnings of television, did not last more than seven episodes because none of them featured the corpse of a problematic teenager wrapped in plastic. Something similar happened to
Lost
, the list of series that sought to emulate its success is as long as its duration is short. “From the authors of
Lost
” was initially a small condemnation for gems like
Fringe
or
The Leftovers
.
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With great (media) power comes great responsibility
Without the last name “from the creators of
Game of Thrones
”,
The 3 Body Problem
would be another science fiction series based on a peak novel of the genre, Apple TV has produced three as I write this column. Associating it with the HBO series will have aroused the curiosity of many viewers, but it is a label that weighs a lot and means little. Everything that was good about it was in Martin's books and everything that made us raise an eyebrow was in Weiss and Benioff's heads. Unfortunate licenses have also been allowed here, I imagine blessed by Netflix. The first, to get it out of China, the game that the management of catastrophes in totalitarian regimes gives us in fiction was already shown to us by
Chernobyl
; the second, leaving the weight of the action on a group of friends as homogeneous as they are forgettable. And if I don't care about the present, how can I care about what happens in four hundred years.
Those who know the original work say that the easily found Chinese version has more substance. If you are not satisfied with either of the two, allow me to recommend another fantastic series, in every sense, it also combines science fiction, a great threat against humanity, politics and fanaticism:
Battlestar Galactica
, “the new one”, is on SkyShowtime and although It is already 20 years old, it seems written tomorrow. You will not regret.
So say we all
.
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