Being a fan of the books I put all my pre-conceived judgement aside and viewed this as an adaptation, and not exactly like the books. I expected some changes to make this into an episodic series. So here's my verdict from both points of view; Non-Biast It starts off well, lots of action, some decent special effects and beautiful scenery, but the action scenes soon become repetitive and feel like they just recycled the same choreography again and again, and the slow-mo fight scenes ala 300 were at first pretty cool, but when they do it for every single fight scene in every single episode, it soon becomes tedious. The Acting is fairly bland, everyone seemingly basing their characters on the stereotype stencil of what they are. The old Wizard is very much gandalf-lite, the bad guy is cold and evil and English, the good guy is brave and wants to help everyone he meets, and the heroine...well you could've had a sock puppet and got better emotional response. Each episodes story was fairly dull as well, resorting to typical trash fantasy TV show style until you get the niggling feeling you're watching a kids show.
Book-Biast It starts off well, beautiful landscapes, some decent fight scenes and special effects, and for the most part the first two episodes follow the books with only a few minor changes to things. From about the third episode on the writers seem to forget this is based on a book and begin to make up their own storyline instead, until suddenly I remembered why I was worried about Sam Raimi making this...it's almost identical to Hercules and Xena. Each episode becomes the Adventures Of Richard The Seeker going around solving mysteries and doing practically everything that deters from the path of the supposed story. All through the book you get the feeling they're pressed for time but with the amount of side-quests they get up to you'd think there was no pressing matter of everlasting darkness approaching. As it gets into it you realise how much more has been changed from the books, to even stupid things like the Sisters Of The Light randomly having a secret valley in the Midlands where train boys and girls without Rada'Hans and Zedd seems totally fine with this. (If you've read the books, the Sisters of the Light are in the Old World not the Midlands, they only train boys, Rada Hans are collars that inflict pain to keep them in check and Zedd hates them with a passion.) I gave up watching this not too long in, about when some boy was running around with a love potion or something. To summarise, if you love the books, avoid, if you've never read the books and like your fantasy shows generic and redundant then look no further. I'm just praying Raimi does a better job on the Warcraft movie...
Book-Biast It starts off well, beautiful landscapes, some decent fight scenes and special effects, and for the most part the first two episodes follow the books with only a few minor changes to things. From about the third episode on the writers seem to forget this is based on a book and begin to make up their own storyline instead, until suddenly I remembered why I was worried about Sam Raimi making this...it's almost identical to Hercules and Xena. Each episode becomes the Adventures Of Richard The Seeker going around solving mysteries and doing practically everything that deters from the path of the supposed story. All through the book you get the feeling they're pressed for time but with the amount of side-quests they get up to you'd think there was no pressing matter of everlasting darkness approaching. As it gets into it you realise how much more has been changed from the books, to even stupid things like the Sisters Of The Light randomly having a secret valley in the Midlands where train boys and girls without Rada'Hans and Zedd seems totally fine with this. (If you've read the books, the Sisters of the Light are in the Old World not the Midlands, they only train boys, Rada Hans are collars that inflict pain to keep them in check and Zedd hates them with a passion.) I gave up watching this not too long in, about when some boy was running around with a love potion or something. To summarise, if you love the books, avoid, if you've never read the books and like your fantasy shows generic and redundant then look no further. I'm just praying Raimi does a better job on the Warcraft movie...