3 Body Problem Is the Consequence of a Post-Game of Thrones TV Landscape

There is a universal truth of the current state of television: Game of Thrones changed everything. The HBO series premiered in 2011 to a very different TV landscape. While expensive TV had been attempted before—especially at HBO, who paid record-breaking bills for series like Rome and Band of Brothers—there was nothing that had reached the same scale of expense and success before. Television, long the medium of small budgets and succinct ideas, was now open to the blockbuster model.

After such a smash success, it felt like series co-creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss could do anything they wanted. But as the HBO series neared its close, many possible projects came and went. The two were hired to write a series of Star Wars films for Disney. And then there was the heavily criticized Confederate, the alternate history “slavery is legal in the South” series that was in development at HBO for two years. But five years after Game of Thrones ended, Benioff and Weiss have finally released a major new project after signing a deal with Netflix: an adaptation of the Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem.

For the first time, Benioff and Weiss are writing TV in the landscape they caused. Expensive TV isn’t a rarity, it’s the norm. Disney+ franchise offerings like Wandavision and The Mandalorian can cost over $25 million per episode. Amazon put $1 billion dollars into developing The Rings of Power and $50 million per episode for the spy series Citadel, a real show that people definitely watched. And even a series that started at a not-too-insanely-expensive price tag like Stranger Things ballooned to a budget of $30 million an episode for Season 4.

So enter 3 Body Problem, an eight-episode series that cost $20 million an episode, even more than Game of Thrones. The series positions itself as a grand sci-fi epic; a story of ordinary scientists wrestling with time, destiny, and the meaning of discovery. It’s a series rich in theming (surprisingly so for writers who previously said themes were for “eighth grade book reports”).

It’s disappointing then that 3 Body Problem uses its budget to switch its setting between a highly advanced virtual reality world and… meetings rooms, living rooms, science labs, and interrogation rooms. Even the virtual reality world’s design has that slight gumminess to its CGI that’s common in blandly lit projects built in post-production. The argument can’t even be made that it’s trying to simulate the uncanny valley look of actual virtual reality since the technology is supposed to be highly advanced in the series’ world. It might be acceptable on a laptop screen, but once you realize Season 1 had almost the same budget as Dune (2021), it’s a little disappointing.

Benioff and Weiss’s desire to adapt The Three-Body Problem is obvious. The series is incredibly rich and filled with weighty ideas in the same vein as Game of Thrones. But Game of Thrones was a fantasy spectacle. 3 Body Problem has some strong set pieces, but it’s most interesting when it’s thinking about what its story means. It’s the type of storytelling that works better in a novel that you can take your time with and ponder with the characters. It also doesn’t help that the characters in the Netflix series are incredibly thin, often relegated to dialogue that leans either too far into just talking about the ideas of the show or just plain exposition. 

3 Body Problem isn’t bad TV. The pacing is pretty strong for an eight-episode series. There’s enough questions and twists to keep viewers entertained. But it feels disappointingly a product of its time. A show made from the scraps of ideas that Game of Thrones put in every screenwriter and TV development executive’s head: that good series are expensive shows based on intellectual property, with large casts and seasons with 10 episodes or less.

The result is a show that is acceptable as entertainment, but wholly unmemorable. No one will be thinking about 3 Body Problem once the autoplay stops. It fills a void in Netflix’s catalog, already preparing a sci-fi replacement once Stranger Things ends next summer. 

But 3 Body Problem comes at the tail-end of an industry starting to change. Ambitious and interesting science fiction and fantasy is being made at not unreasonable budgets. Apple TV+ has found success with its catalog of sci-fi shows like Severance, Silo, or even more down-to-Earth offerings like The Big Door Prize. After five years of trying to have the next Game of Thrones, nothing absurdly expensive is receiving the same level of returns and excitement as simple well-made TV with big ideas.

FX’s new series Shōgun is also an impressive display of putting millions of dollars to good use to create a series with intense displays of detail. The Rings of Power isn’t always interesting, but when they bother to build sets, it creates the same awe in construction that Game of Thrones once did. 3 Body Problem is neither beautiful nor cleverly made. For a show that cost 160 million dollars, it somehow succeeds best at being the quick entertainment that the medium of television has always been criticized for upholding. 

The 3 Body Problem could’ve been simple. But the show isn’t confident in its quiet moments. Benioff and Weiss seem used to getting blank checks and don’t know what to do when they can’t rely on spectacle. Watching 3 Body Problem, you can almost feel the missed opportunities racing by. Benioff and Weiss don’t seem to realize they’re coming in at the tail-end of the Game of Thrones era of blockbuster TV. Rather than add something to the flock of innovative TV, they rely on what they already know works because the whole industry copied them.

But a lot can change in five years. Game of Thrones left a sour taste in many watcher’s mouths. The media industry is consolidating and shrinking and the endless spending era of TV feels stranger with every new mega-budget release. Price tags don’t have the glimmer they used to. We accept TV is different now, but standards are raised. If streamers are going to raise subscription prices and add advertisements, they need to make better TV instead of recycling old ideas.

The end result for 3 Body Problem is a show that exists in the in-between. Expensive and ambitious, yet small and unfulfilling. Engaging and forgettable. Every piece of the series is made of the murk Game of Thrones left in its wake. 3 Body Problem is a show inherently of its time, but it already feels like it came out too late.

3 Body Problem asks a big question of the humans in its world: to make progress for generations that are hundreds of years away. To continue to research and innovate even though you will not live to see the results. To keep building in an impossible universe that doesn’t seem to make sense. It is ultimately a show that asks you to care for the future and embrace change. It’s disappointing that the series doesn’t keep that concern for the TV landscape, too.

Leila Jordan is a writer and former jigsaw puzzle world record holder. Her work has appeared in Paste Magazine, the LA Times, Business Insider, Gold Derby, TheWrap, FOX Digital, The Spool, and Awards Radar. To talk about all things movies, TV, and useless trivia you can find her @galaxyleila

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