10 TV Shows You Were Ready To Hate

Historically, film and television adaptations of video games have rarely been received well. Storylines that were created with an interactive medium in mind often don’t translate well, the intricacies of gaming culture and narratives are often misunderstood by Hollywood, and the quality of the vast majority of adaptations has been subpar at best. Considering that there has been a shift towards long form television adaptations over films, which arguably suits the typically 10+ hour run-time of games far better, public reception to some of these projects is gradually becoming more positive.

Halo is not one of these. While Paramount+’s series did make some winning choices, such as having the original voice actress for Cortana reprise her role, the initial trailers raised concerns for many long time fans of the iconic franchise. The show was seen as being both too derivative of other sci-fi shows, as well as not an accurate Halo adaptation, and harbouring issues in costuming and production value. If fans don’t think Master Chief looks like Master Chief, you aren’t going to get far.

In reality, reviews of the final product proved much more mixed. Hardcore game and comic fans derided the show’s faithlessness, while critics, more casual fans and newcomers praised the action and performances, but heavily criticised the writing and story. Thankfully, Halo made the explicit choice to be set in an alternate universe from the main games, ensuring their take on the source material doesn’t influence the original canon, so here’s hoping the greenlit second season will fix its mistakes and build itself into a version of Halo that is worthwhile, if different.