This series started really well.
Matilda Lawler and Himesh Patel, weaved an intriguing story and were standout actors. Episode one was fantastic and hinted at a great story.
Unfortunately episode 2 introduced the upsell, the add on bit we didn't really want, the traveling troop of unlikable actors keeping culture alive in the post pandemic world, and we kind of had to suffer through their plot details in order to get the story of Jeevan and Kirsten.
Yes the book does have all that prophet stuff in it, so I guess they had to include it but it was either badly handled to the point that it paled in comparison to the 'A' story, or it just wasn't that good in the book.
It certainly put an awkward bend in it that I didn't really enjoy.
Big happy ending though, with the guy who trained young children to suicide bomb an adult, walking off into the distance reunited with his mum, awwwww, that's nice.
I'm not sure how the book dealt with that part of the story, the suicide bomb kids but there was no coming back from that for me. It seemed unnecessary when there was a perfectly good story about the pandemic and survival to tell, but how the show just brushed aside that horrific detail, and got on board with reuniting the psychopath with his mum. They never really sold why he turn out to be a psychopath either,cos his dad died? I don't get it.
So this was half a very good series and half a "do we really have to tolerate this to get that?" I feel really conflicted about it. Half of this was really bad, but, half of this was really good, and that's mostly in the book, but is the book half bad too? I don't intend to read it to find out.
Also the brooklyn hipster stuff, yuck.