Watchmen review: One of the best TV shows of the year

Just like how the English author boldly confronted the contemporary social and political issues in the United States in the late 1980s, Lindelof’s Watchmen deals with the present concerns: chiefly white supremacy and racism. And it does it amazingly well.

The show is immaculately made. The budget has been put to good use. The cinematography and visual effects are simply excellent. The writing is consistently smart, with weighty, substantial dialogue that one has to pause and replay to fully grasp it (or at least I did that). This series demands your constant attention. Bingeing won’t do justice here.

The pacing, unlike other prestige series of its kind, is blazing fast. So fast sometimes that it is hard to take a breath before one thing leads to another. But it is still fun to solve one of the series’ many mysteries.

As with the original graphic novel, HBO’s Watchmen is also set in an alternate reality. Many notable events did not occur, or occurred differently. The series kicks off with the Tulsa race riot, a massacre carried out by a white mob, which, unfortunately, was a real event and a blot upon the history of America. It is a tragic event that has not particularly been a favourite thing of filmmakers to depict. This is just one of the audacious ways Watchmen brings forth race-based violence back into the conversation.

The members of the Rorschach cult.

Thankfully, the way Watchmen handles racism is both complex and subtle. It is more than just stating racism is bad. It also links it to the vigilantism that Moore’s tale was all about and highlights both its perils and how it can sometimes work. The cast is uniformly top notch. Regina King, who is just brilliant here, headlines as a police officer called Angela Abar, who operates via a secret identity to protect her family after a white supremacist cult inspired by Rorschach targeted her and other police officers, killing many by barging into their homes.

However, Watchmen is more than just cops vs the Rorschach cult and there are deeper conspiracies at play with Angela in the crosshairs. Jean Smart, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Louis Gossett Jr and Jeremy Irons also star and are all reliably good.

Moore would disagree, but HBO’s Watchmen, to me, is a bona fide sequel to the source material that despite telling a fresh story with (mostly) new characters stays true to the spirit of the original.

Watchmen is streaming on Hotstar. It will also have its Indian television premiere on November 24 on Star World at 10 PM.