3 Body Problem is not, strictly speaking, David Benioff and DB Weiss’s first series since wrapping up Game of Thrones. The first project of their lucrative deal with Netflix was, improbably, The Chair, a sharp, underrated campus satire which they executive produced. It was cancelled after one season, its modest budget perhaps now funding a single second of CGI in this exceedingly costly sci-fi series, created by Benioff and Weiss along with Alexander Woo.
The show, which revolves around telegenic scientists, apocalyptic events and strange galactic phenomena, is based on Liu Cixin’s eponymous bestseller: an opus combining physics, philosophy and politics. But if adapting such rich material seems like a no-brainer, the show itself is middling fare that bends minds but rarely engages them in its meditations on human nature, technology, the state of this planet and those far beyond.