The Wheel of Time: Season 1, Episodes 1-4

The peaceful tranquillity of the remote rural region known as the Two Rivers is abruptly shattered by the arrival of an Aes Sedai, a wielder of the One Power, named Moiraine. According to the Aes Sedai, the Dragon - the most powerful channeller who has ever lived - has been Reborn, and their return may herald the approach of the Last Battle against the Shadow. And the Dragon Reborn is one of four young people in the community. When Shadowspawn - Trollocs and Fades - attack the village and leave it in ruins, it appears that Moiraine was right. But three of the four candidates are men, and men who can channel the One Power are doomed to go insane and cause great death and destruction in the process...

It's taken almost thirty-two years since the first book was published, but Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy sequence has finally made it to the screen. There have been multiple aborted attempts involving strange paid-for adverts, Japanese animation studios and even a planned NBC show, but it's fallen to Sony and Amazon to bring the project to fruition. The lengthy production process has not helped, with filming repeatedly interrupted and delayed by the COVID pandemic. But it's here and the first four episodes - half of the first season - are now available.

The Wheel of Time is the latest big fantasy series to hit the screen but in some respects the most challenging. The novels consist of fourteen fairly massive tomes, with well over two thousand named characters (several hundred of which are semi-important to the narrative), set in a richly-detailed world with almost four thousand years of intricately-detailed history, accompanied by maps, a dictionary for a fictional language and a lengthy concordance of fictional names, terms and concepts. The books borrow heavily from various different religious and philosophical ideals, many of them not familiar to a western audience. There's an entire magic system with deeply-thought-out, complex rules. The sheer amount of information that needs to be transmitted to a newcomer is daunting.

The first episode, Leavetaking, makes the probably wise decision to not even try to frontload all this background in favour of focusing on the five key characters of Rand, Egwene, Mat, Nynaeve and Perrin, along with the newcomer Moiraine and her bodyguard, Lan. The episode spends 40 minutes or so in character and world-building, through scenes like Egwene going through a coming of age ceremony, Moiraine quizzing Nynaeve on her childhood, Rand struggling with what he wants from life, Mat trying to look after his sisters when his parents are wastrels and Perrin facing marital problems.

There are some pretty big changes from the novel here in an attempt to bring out internal character monologues and development into a visual shorthand. Giving Mat lame parents and turning him into a slightly darker character is controversial, but you can see where they are coming from. Giving Perrin a wife and having her die to provide him with character motivation is an egregious example of the fridging trope, and is easily the biggest mistake the show makes in its early going, especially because it leaves Perrin so shell-shocked and suffering from PTSD that the audience is unable to get a hand on the "real" Perrin's character.

The episode culminates in the Trolloc attack on Winternight, which is where Amazon's big bucks come into play. The Shadowspawn are realised mostly through superb prosthetic work (CGI long-shots of them in the distance are more variable) and the fight against them is mostly rendered in-camera with practical effects amidst all the swirling CGI. Seeing Moiraine cut loose with the One Power against the enemy is genuinely impressive, using fire, lightning, wind and earth in combination to lay waste to the Trolloc ranks.

The negatives are grating and, in some cases, inexplicable, but given the volume of information that has to be given to the audience and the amount of setup work that needs to be done whilst telling an interesting story, Wheel of Time's debut episode does work, if inelegantly.

Things improve in the second episode, Shadow's Waiting, where our heroes flee across the countryside to the ruined city of Shadar Logoth, having an awkward encounter with the Children of the Light along the way. Book fans may bemoan the loss of Baerlon and the delayed meeting with Min, but in its place we have more character development and exposition of the backstory, with Moiraine's horseback monologue about the fall of Manetheren being a well-acted highlight of the episode. The Shadar Logoth sequence is well-realised, with a genuinely creepy atmosphere, even if the "Breaking of the Fellowship" moment feels even more contrived than it is in the book.

The third episode, A Place of Safety starts to see the show firing on all cylinders. Rand and Mat's Nightmare Road Trip from The Eye of the World is partially condensed here (exemplified by them visiting the "Four Kings Inn" in Breen's Spring, whereas in the novel Four Kings and Breen's Spring are separate villages) but to great effect, with Izuka Hoyle's excellent performance as innkeeper Dana giving the episode an interesting spin. In the Wheel of Time novels, there is often a lack of convincing motivation given to those who follow the Shadow, but Dana provides very plausible reasons why a normal, sane person might do so. The episode also introduces Thom Merrilin, played with convincing gravitas by The Last Kingdom's Alexandre Willaume. TV Thom is younger and apparently a bit rougher around the edges than the book incarnation, but it's a great performance, hinting at the book character's colourful past. This episode is also where Zoe Robins steps into her own as Nynaeve, as she, Lan and Moiraine begin their three-way sparring.

The fourth episode, The Dragon Reborn, manages the not-inconsiderable feat of taking the largest liberties with the book, with Nynaeve, Lan and Moiraine encountering the Aes Sedai party taking the captive Logain to Tar Valon, whilst also being the truest to the book lore. How men and women channel, how shielding and linking work, what the Aes Sedai Ajahs are and how the Warder/Aes Sedai bond operates are all key parts of the episode, but rather than delivered through bald exposition, these concepts are exemplified through on-screen drama. The dramatically varying behaviour of different Aes Sedai is also shown. Subplots follow Nynaeve and Perrin with the Tuatha'an, a low-key storyline in the books here improved by the fabulous casting of Irish national treasure Maria Doyle Kennedy as Ila and promising up-and-comer Daryl McCormack as Aram, possibly the single most supremely punchable character in the books but here played with sympathy and charisma. The Tuatha'an's slightly iffy Irish traveller vibe from the books is also improved here in two sequences where Ila explains the Way of the Leaf in terms of its philosophical interaction with the ideology of the Wheel of Time. In fact, the show overall improves over the books in showing how the 100% knowledge of reincarnation as a fact of life impacts on everyday existence, with the philosophical belief in death and rebirth rendering traditional religion unnecessary in a way that Robert Jordan never really convinced with in the novels.

The Dragon Reborn culminates in the show's finest set-piece so far, with a large battle and inventive channelling of the One Power, including depicting ideas such as linking, shielding and gentling, which are hard concepts to get across without pages of expository text.

This steadily improving level of quality is quite impressive, and the show benefits from a superb musical score by Lorne Balfe (surprisingly low-key in the mix as it is), mostly effective CGI (some wonky Trolloc long-shots aside) and a battery of excellent performances by the mostly young and inexperienced cast, anchored by reliable stalwarts Rosamund Pike, Michael McElhatton and Daniel Henney.

Overall, the first half of the first season of The Wheel of Time (****) is a qualified success. A somewhat rough opening smooths out and the show grows in confidence and enjoyment as it carries on. Yes, in a perfect universe we'd have 30-episode seasons with each episode costing $40 million to tell the story of the novels in full, but given the time constraints the show has to work with, it's so far made reasonable choices (with that one glaring error of Perrin's backstory). Some clunky lines and uneven levels of exposition are balanced out by fine performances, great music and some fabulous location filming in the Czech Republic and Slovenia. So far, off to a promising start.

The Wheel of Time: Season 1

1. Leavetaking ***
2. Shadow's Waiting ***½
3. A Place of Safety ****
4. The Dragon Reborn ****½

Forthcoming episodes: Blood Calls Blood (3 December), The Flame of Tar Valon (10 December), The Dark Along the Ways (17 December), The Eye of the World (24 December).