The TV series managed to keep a steadily inferior quality of writing compared to the books. The characters made worse decisions, the writers picked the wrong characters to live and killed off the best ones, the setpieces lost their atmosphere and the main backstory (the backbone) was thrown away.
If the books were kind of average and maybe enjoyable (around 6-7), the series went on to be just bad, at maybe 3-4 with some good moments of some mediocre characters and a lot of bad dialogue and bad writing. I love Del Toro, I am fan of his work. Some of his movies are some of the best I've seen in my life, but the Strain was... annoying.
The deviation from the books was definitely for the worse and besides some minor details, went to all the wrong ways. Zack is definitely one of the worst characters ever. His motives, his stupidity, his decisions, even in the books and even more so in the TV series. The ending was insulting to the viewer.
I would recommend the books to the fans of the genre and I would recommend avoiding the series. Maybe only watching the first season. Setrakian, Quinlan, Eichhorst and the Master are great characters and deserve better. Eph and Nora had potential too with different storylines (though the two actors did a good job). But... that's it.
Review by Storm1672BlockedParent2018-07-05T22:53:08Z
The TV series managed to keep a steadily inferior quality of writing compared to the books. The characters made worse decisions, the writers picked the wrong characters to live and killed off the best ones, the setpieces lost their atmosphere and the main backstory (the backbone) was thrown away.
If the books were kind of average and maybe enjoyable (around 6-7), the series went on to be just bad, at maybe 3-4 with some good moments of some mediocre characters and a lot of bad dialogue and bad writing. I love Del Toro, I am fan of his work. Some of his movies are some of the best I've seen in my life, but the Strain was... annoying.
The deviation from the books was definitely for the worse and besides some minor details, went to all the wrong ways. Zack is definitely one of the worst characters ever. His motives, his stupidity, his decisions, even in the books and even more so in the TV series. The ending was insulting to the viewer.
I would recommend the books to the fans of the genre and I would recommend avoiding the series. Maybe only watching the first season. Setrakian, Quinlan, Eichhorst and the Master are great characters and deserve better. Eph and Nora had potential too with different storylines (though the two actors did a good job). But... that's it.