I'm currently at ep 5. I haven't read the books (yet), but the premise was very interesting to me as a scifi fan. It's been good so far. It definitely helps to read non-spoiler explanations from book readers to understand the advanced technology being used, like the Sophon; since a tv/movie adaptation has to rush things and can't explain everything.
As for the acting, I think some of the main physicist characters are meh, not as good as the older cast and the ones on the flashback scenes.
All in all, it's pretty good. D&D are good showrunners as long as they have an established story they can work off of. They really only suck when they themselves have to write.
Watched it over the weekend and overall enjoyed it, but wasn't blown away. However since i really loved the books and am a sci-fi an in general that was to be expected, as long as it didn't completely botch it. It's been quite a while since i've read the source material, which makes it somewhat hard to properly judge the adaption.
Overall i don't mind characters and loaction being altered, since i found the general concepts to be the strongest part of the books. So changing most of the main cast to not be chinese unlike in the books didn't bother me much, since it is a story that happens on a global scale. Outside of course the flashback scenes of Ye Wenjie (which were done quite well imo). However changing the chinese centric cast to a group of british friends that all know eachother seems a bit pointless (outside of making the show easier to market/shoot), since instead of expanding the scale it makes it even more narrow.
I've actually started to watch the chinese TV show as comparison and what i like better there is that the science feels more sciency if that makes sense. For example it's not the stars that blink, but fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background. Or the nanotechnology scientist is a professor that actually works in a lab that looks convincible, compared to the Auggie Salazar character.
I enjoyed it! I got spoiled from reading a news article, but only for the first half of the show.
It was a cool concept and it did some new things. The plot felt a bit like a YA novel though
