Watchmen

Our Review

Damon Lindelof’s “remix” of Alan Moore’s unfilmable graphic novel is one of the best TV dramas of the decade — a sequel that treats the source as history, not homework. Set 34 years after the comic: Tulsa, 2019 — police wear masks after a white-supremacist terror campaign targets cops, Angela Abar (Regina King, monumental) is a masked detective, and the past won’t stay buried: Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons, camp perfection) plays god on a moon of Europa, and the Seventh Kavalry wants the power of a god who’s living as a human man in Tulsa, in love with Angela.

The show is a rare sequel that transcends its source: the This Extraordinary Being episode (Angela’s grandfather Will Reeves — a Hooded Justice origin story about America’s original sin, staged in black-and-white) is one of the greatest hours of television ever broadcast. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre recreation is devastating and historically essential. The mythology (Lady Trieu’s plan, the pills that let you inherit your ancestors’ memories) builds to a finale about inherited trauma and the choice to break it. It won a pile of Emmys and stands as the ceiling of the IP-sequel genre.

Verdict: Watch it. Nothing ever ends — and this is how you adapt the impossible.