Posted in: Netflix, Peacock, TV | Tagged: Liu Cixin, netflix, peacock, science fiction, TenCent, The Three-Body Problem

Three-Body Problem: Peacock Streams Chinese Series Before Netflix Take

Three-Body Problem, the original Chinese TV series adaptation, will stream on Peacock a month before the Netflix version hits screens.

Here's a Chinese New Year (or should it be Lunar New Year since other parts of Asia celebrate it too?) surprise: the original Chinese TV series adaptation of Liu Cixin's epic Science Fiction saga The Three-Body Problem is going to stream on Peacock on February 10th, a month ahead of the Netflix adaptation. All thirty episodes of the series will be available on the streamer.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that The Three-Body Problem would be streaming on Peacock. It's hard to know why Peacock decided to get the rights to stream the series now, considering it's still available for free on Tencent's YouTube Channel and on Prime Video if you have Amazon Prime. Is Peacock just messing with Netflix considering a lot of people already know where to watch the series before this premiere? Or does it showing up on Peacock make even more people aware that it exists? Many people still don't know the Chinese TV series exists after all.

I hope Peacock got good subtitles done for the Chinese Three-Body Problem. Just this week, a viewer thanked me on X/Twitter for recapping all thirty episodes as they streamed a year ago because he said without them, he would have been totally lost trying to watch the show – and he's read the book. Tencent's subtitles are often terrible. IQIYI does a better job with their English subtitles. Viki, which licenses shows from both Tencent and IQIYI, crowdsources subtitling from fans – God knows if they pay them – so they're okay, but still not great. As far as I can tell, there have been no native English speakers doing subtitles for Chinese shows.

The Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem is the most faithful adaptation of any book anywhere this century. They actually shot the whole book, though the key scenes set in the Cultural Revolution that became a key influence on the most important character in the story ended up being censored on Chinese television. The Netflix version draws characters and story elements from the second and third books in the trilogy to put into the first season to make the US version less slow and more condensed, as well as gender-swapping at least one main character to a woman and condensing a few others into one, as well as – big surprise! – making several main characters American or British or European. It's very different from the original book or Chinese version, of course. Whether it's any good or better remains to be seen. It is nearly impossible to put the story of all three books into a single eight-episode season properly, and Netflix has not renewed it yet.

Unfortunately, the subtitles to Peacock's trailer for The Three-Body Problem are terrible. The grammar and syntax are still off. Did a human translate it, or is it machine translation (MLT)? If they don't get good subtitles for the series, they're not doing themselves any favours considering it's hard enough convincing most American viewers to read subtitles, let alone incoherent ones.

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