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| Netflix, 2018 |
Well, it’s all over. A Series of Unfortunate Events has come to an end after a surprise Season 3 premiere on New Years Day. After finishing up the final episodes of this series, I can safely say that I was satisfied with how it all ended and I thought it was a pretty good series overall. Because I’ve finished the series it’s review time.
I remember seeing teaser trailers for this show and being somewhat skeptical of it due to having being familiar with the 2004 film adaptation with Jim Carrey as Count Olaf. I had read the first three books and thought the film did too much skimming over of the few books as Lemony Snicket/Daniel Handler hadn’t finished up the book series just yet. After seeing that Neil Patrick Harris was going to be Count Olaf, I was a little bit worried as I felt that he was going to botch it up with his hammy acting, even though he is a very decent actor in real life. Anyways, I was minding my own business and surfing around Netflix one day and I saw that the series had just premiered and decided to check it out. After watching through the first season, I was really interested seeing what happened next as I had only gone past the first three books in the film and the books. After watching Season 2 and Season 3, I was pleased that I had watched this series and found it to be a decent show to watch on Netflix.
Neil Patrick Harris was a solid Count Olaf that I found to be better than Jim Carrey, he was more quirky and not as serious as he was in the books but I honestly felt that was point of the character, he’s devious but somewhat laughable and has his reasons for being evil. Patrick Warburton did a marvelous job of playing Lemony Snicket as his narrations and dry humor were great, he somewhat reminded me of Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone, not to mention that he is an actual character that becomes involved in the story near the end of the series and not just as a journalistic author/host. Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, and Presley Smith did a fantastic job as Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. The character development of the Baudelaire Orphans from Season 1 to Season 3 was so good to the point where I was rooting for them to finally find happiness after going through so much pain and suffering from Count Olaf and other nasty villains.
I liked the twist and turns that occur throughout the series and that it kept to the grim and sad tone of the books. The production design from Bo Welch was good as it usually is and it felt like I was watching a Tim Burton-like film at times. Barry Sonnenfield was a good choice to develop this series as he has had a great experience with adapting gothic stories like The Addams Family/Addams Family Values. I felt that the decision to split the books into two or three episodes was a good move as it allows you to breathe and not feel rushed through the story. I thought that the end of the series was really thoughtful and made sense for this type of series. I also like that most of the episodes feature a guest star like Will Arnett, Cobie Smulders, Nathan Fillion, Allison Williams, Joan Cusack, Tony Hale, and Catherine O’Hara. I don’t really have that many problems with the show, except that there might be some annoying characters like Carmelita Spats and Esmé Squalor that will possibly turn some people off of the series, but it wasn’t too annoying for me as they could sometimes be funny.
Overall, this was a good series. Could it have been better, possibly but I was honestly pleased with what I saw. I would say that the best episodes are in Season 2 and Season 3, but Season 1 had some good moments. If you like the books, check out this series, it’s a worthy adaptation and is worth watching if you like watching Barry Sonnenfield’s films such as The Addams Family or some of Tim Burton’s best work like Edward Scissorhands and Batman.
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