Overall I agree, it's pretty good. I may need to watch the 8 episodes again, because I was distracted by comparing it against the book and the Tencent/Chinese adaptation. Some scenes which I could tell were supposed to be emotional or shocking weren't as impactful as they could be, because I knew what was coming.

The biggest change was the Oxford Five, which gave character continuity from 3BP to the Crisis Era, and I think it worked ok. Unfortunately that aspect was also detracting, giving a "small world" sense that they all knew each other. The books sorta had that same issue but to a lesser extent (e.g. Da Shi was involved with all sorts of things that I would have expected was beyond his role as an investigator, even ending up on security detail for Luo Ji, ignoring his radiation poisoning from the first book).

I've been impressed with recent adaptations, like 3BP and Dune Part 2. Villeneuve changed a lot of little details but the story was still intact and impactful. Similarly 3BP/Netflix kept the cool ideas from the book while simplifying parts and dropping some complicating subplots -- e.g. ETO factions, Ye Wenjie cutting the rope at Red Coast Base.

One thing I wish they hadn't cut out was Ding Yi's analogy of the cigarette/pipe filter during his discussion with Wang about the sophons. It was helpful to me to imagine the unfolding of higher dimensions. In the Netfix show, they just seemed to expect everyone to understand that the unfolded particle would look like a mirrored surface.

A note about Tencent adaptation: The CG and acting by the non-Chinese actors were kind of subpar, but the nano-filament scene was awesome and just as good as the Netflix version. I was looking forward to the Netflix version to see if they could top it, but it was pretty much the same.

Speculation: I wonder if Raj will turn out to be the Zhang Beihai character, continuing on to the Battle of Darkness.

Last week when the tomguide review came out, he mentioned about a "Red Wedding" moment midway in the season -- but I know the real "red wedding" is in book 2, and nothing compares to that. What was he talking about? Jack's death?