Three-Body
三体
A 30-episode CCTV and Tencent Video science-fiction drama adapting Liu Cixin's novel, in which a nanotechnology researcher is drawn into a string of scientists' suicides.
Save- Premiere
- Jan 15, 2023
- Episodes
- 30
- Where to watch
- CCTV
- Also known as
- 三体(剧版) · 三体·周年纪念版 · San Ti · Le problème à trois corps · 삼체 문명의 경계 · Kaalagni · Задача трёх тел · Three Body
About the drama
Three-Body (三体, San Ti) is the first full screen adaptation of Liu Cixin's (刘慈欣) novel The Three-Body Problem, and it chose to be faithful rather than flashy. It premiered on January 15, 2023, on CCTV-8, with Tencent Video and Migu Video streaming it, and runs 30 episodes.
Its opening is a mystery, not a spaceship story: scientists around the world are dying by suicide, a countdown appears before the eyes of a researcher, and a video game seems to have something to do with all of it. Viewers who know the book will recognise the lines and set pieces almost unchanged. Viewers who do not may find the physics talk heavy, a point Chinese critics raised too.
Jiemian credited the show with a believable 2007 setting and with simple visual aids for ideas such as the "shooter and farmer" parable. A particle physicist told Southern Finance that the accelerator scenes looked real and carefully made.
more
Wang Miao (汪淼, Zhang Luyi, 张鲁一) is a nanomaterials researcher. Police officer Shi Qiang (史强, Yu Hewei, 于和伟), a rumpled and sharp detective, brings him into an investigation into the deaths. Wang is asked to join a group called Frontiers of Science (科学边界) and meets Shen Yufei (申玉菲), who introduces a virtual-reality game also called Three Body.
The story reaches back to the 1970s through Ye Wenjie (叶文洁, played by Wang Ziwen 王子文 when young and Chen Jin 陈瑾 when older), whose past drives the later episodes.
The story begins in 2007 and moves between that year and the 1970s. The three-body problem (三体问题) is the unsolved question in celestial mechanics of predicting how three bodies move under mutual gravity. The novel won the Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 73rd Hugo Awards.
CCTV, Penguin Pictures (企鹅影视), Linghe Culture (灵河文化), Migu Culture and Three-Body Universe (三体宇宙) produced it. Yang Lei (杨磊) directed. Tencent Video said it passed 25,000 on its heat index within an hour of launch, a record for a Tencent drama's first day. Interest cooled later: on Jiemian's account, Tencent's hoped-for mass audience did not come, and The Knockout (狂飙) took viewers in the same weeks.
Its Douban score rose from 8.0 to 8.5 by the finale, according to Jiemian. Jiemian praised the faithfulness of the adaptation and the performances of Chen Jin, Yu Hewei, Zhang Luyi and Wang Ziwen.
Cast and crew
Our coverage
No articles yet.
Where to watch
Want to talk about this? Join the conversation on our Discord →