lucas182

The first two or three episodes in this 6-part miniseries suffer from egregious pacing issues, and poorly written dialogue. Time absolutely flies in these episodes, and we are introduced to - what feels like - dozens upon dozens of characters. It's way too fast, and the scripts simply were not up to the challenge. Most of the dialogue is extremely matter-of-fact, made to get to the point and drive the plot forward as fast as possible. New characters get a camera pointed at them, and their name shown in writing, because the writers couldn't find a way to introduce them naturally through conversation or in a worthy scene. It feels like actors were given zero tolerance for adlibbing or going with the flow, being forced to say every syllable of poorly written lines, resulting in rigid conversations between characters.

A lot of the early pre F1 races have race commentary that feels extremely out of place, in an obvious attempt to guide the viewer, when no guiding was ever needed (the cinematography was always enough).

Thankfully this begins to change after Senna starts his F1 career. My guess is the production simply had better, real material to work with, as these events were all heavily documented. Race commentary stops being a bother, because the broadcasts were all faithfully recreated. Dialogue starts to flow better, because the show wasn't hell bent on introducing 12 characters per minute. And the production value gets a major upgrade, as we start hearing the roar from the F1 engines we've always known.

The pacing also stops being a major issue in the last 3 episodes. It no longer feels like you're travelling 40 years into the future every time you press play, and the buildup and anticipation for the events we all know about help make the last 3 hours feel more epic.

Overall, this is a tale of two halves. Jekyll and Hyde. Yin and Yang. It starts as a 6, it finishes as an 8. Averages out as a 7. It could have used at least 2 more episodes to help with the pacing in the first half. It's a good dramatization of Senna's life, but not even close to the best Senna production, which is the 2010 feature-length documentary that shares the same title.

The only reason I'm watching this show is because I love the games. All three of them, with Witcher 3 being a supreme masterpiece.

I didn't like season 1. I thought the writing wasn't great like the game, I didn't like the changes in some characters, that stupid ballsack armor, and I especially didn't think Henry Cavill was good. I felt he tried too hard to imitate Geralt from the games and ended up not acting well at all.

That all being said, this first episode is a giant homage to Witcher 3, and a very well written one at that. This is essentially a monster hunting quest from the third game, but in TV form. Just like in the game, this quest was very well done on TV.

Fans of The Witcher 3 will love this episode.