Adapting a popular film into a TV series is certainly no easy feat.
Starring the likes of Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and Ed Harris, Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi thriller Snowpiercer was met with critical and box office success when it was released in 2013.
So, when the pilot episode of a TV series based on the exact same story first aired in 2020, many viewers were likely left questioning… why?
Now, however, after all four seasons of the TV series were made available to stream for free in the UK on ITVX after originally launching on Netflix, fans have hailed the show as ‘amazing’.
Much like the film, Snowpiercer follows the story of a train that perpetually travels the globe, carrying the only humans left on Earth seven years after a sudden apocalyptic ice age event.
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Featuring Jennifer Connelly and Sean Bean in key roles, as well as Hamilton star Daveed Diggs and English actress Mickey Sumner, the Snowpiercer TV series concluded with its fourth and final season airing in mid-2024.
Taking to Reddit, viewers praised the dystopian storyline, with Games-and-Coffee writing: ‘I adore the movie and just binged the show over the last month. I’m going to miss being immersed in this universe.’
Esmoji also described the series as ‘amazing’, while Altruistic_Yellow387 said ‘the show is so much better than the movie’.
Meanwhile, Aunon exclaimed: ‘I am so happy the show wasn’t cancelled and we got an ending.’
However, despite all of the praise for the ‘best first season’, finkledinkle7 summed up a lot of viewers by saying ‘the writers had no idea where to go with the show’ after the first season.
Despite saying that the ‘casting felt right’ and the adaptation ‘didn’t feel too far fetched’, they concluded: ‘I’ve never seen a show hit so many notes so well, then just fall flat because the story ran out of runway.’
Reverse_Quikeh similarly said that the ‘overall story was good’, but ‘the jump between the end of Season 1 and beginning of season 2 was rushed’.
They added: ‘There should have been a season exploring the train from the eyes of the tailies and everyone adjusting to the new norm.’
The award-winning series was helmed primarily by Graeme Manson after being created by Graeme and fellow TV writer Josh Friedman.
The TV version does cast the story further back in time, as well as introducing new characters and storylines.
But while the series goes in a very different direction to Joon-Ho’s film, it’s based on the same text that he adapted for his film 11 years ago.
That text is the French graphic novel series Le Transperceneige, which literally translates to Snowpiercer, which was published in 1982 and was later retitled The Escape.
The show’s rediscovery comes after a steamy drama dubbed ‘the sexiest show of the year’ finally confirmed its UK streaming release date.
Heated Rivalry, based on Rachel Reid’s book of the same name, is about two opposing hockey players – Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) – who fall in love.
As they clash in the game, their forbidden romance is challenged off the ice as well, ultimately putting their careers and budding love at risk.
Snowpiercer is available to stream on ITVX.
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