Based on Lemony Snicket’s novel series of the same name, “A Series of Unfortunate Events” is Netflix’s newest hit show. The show takes every amazing feature the of the classic book series had and greatly exaggerates them, giving old and new fans alike something to enjoy.

The series takes the first four novels, and gives each novel two episodes. The show stars Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf, Malina Weissman as Violet, Louis Hynes as Claus, and Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket himself.

Review:

The first two episodes of the series were both titled ‘The Bad Beginning,” named after the first novel in the series.

This episode served as a perfect introduction to all of the characters included, specifically Count Olaf and his henchmen. They utilized every character, and no character seemed overexposed. Each of the Baudelaire’s had their own skill that allowed him or her to be useful in specific scenarios. Klaus was the genius, Violet was the inventor, and little Sunny was the biter and fighter.

In addition to this, the way Netflix handled Count Olaf’s plot was fantastic. The series made the viewer loath Count Olaf and love the Buadelaires. Neil Patrick Harris portrayed the evil villain perfectly, making it seem like he would actually marry Violet simply to gain their fortune.

Personally, I believed that the lack of appearances from Poe’s secretary, who was assisting the Baudelaires throughout their trek, was a serious drawback to these episodes. Every time she appeared in the series, she was incredibly useful, but she simply didn’t appear enough.

The following 2 episodes, titled “The Reptile Room,” featured Montgomery Montgomery, a loving relative of the Baudelaire’s. These two episodes were my favorites in the series, for a variety of reasons. In fact, there are very few flaws in these episodes.

These episodes fixed the major problem in the previous two: the rather insignificant role played by Poe’s secretary. To my delight, she played a rather large role in these two episodes. She poses as a statue for an impossibly long time, she assists the Baudelaire’s, and is overall just a great character.

Another positive of these two episodes was the fantastic relationship development between Monty and the kids. The children were rightfully skeptical at first, but as time went on, he gained their trust. Of course, trust couldn’t save him from the inevitable fate all guardians receive at the hands of Count Olaf. Up until Monty’s death, they handled his relationship with the children perfectly, better than they treated any other relationship on the show.

The only negative I truly found with this episode was the attempts at humor by Neil Patrick Harris. These attempts occurred when we saw Count Olaf undertake the identity of “Stefano”, a hopeful assistant to Monty. Harris constantly attempted to crack jokes hinting at the possibility that Count Olaf was Stefano, but Monty simply couldn’t tell, which ended up being his demise. These jokes weren’t poorly placed or timed, just poorly written, and ultimately unnecessary.  

The fifth and sixth episodes, based off “The Wide Window,” followed the Baudelaire children as they found a brand new guardian, their aunt Josephine. These episodes weren’t nearly as exciting as the previous four, causing them to be my least favorite of the series.

Despite the fact that these two episodes overall weren’t very intriguing, they did have some incredibly interesting moments. Two of the best moments of the episodes included Josephine’s “suicide”,  and Count Olaf’s (or “Captain Sham’s”) plan.

One overwhelmingly redeeming factor from these two episodes was the constant jokes made by Josephine regarding grammar. If you’ve seen this show, and/or read the books, you would know about her grammar obsession. Netflix did a fantastic job of transforming this obsession into something that was not only funny, but also very well timed and well placed.

The last two episodes of the series were focused on the fourth book, which is titled “The Miserable Mill,” and were oddly entertaining. Despite the fact that much of the humor fell flat, the shocking twists and cliffhangers left for the next season were enough to make these episodes more than acceptable.

One of the key reasons these episodes were great was the use of the Quagmire family as a trick played on the viewers. Throughout the series, we were tricked into believing that the Baudelaire’s parents were still alive. In reality, the people the viewers saw wasn’t the parents of the Baudelaire children, but two family friends of theirs.

With these two episodes, the one factor that really holds it down is the humor. Despite the fact that it worked very well in previous episodes, nearly every single joke failed to work in these final episodes, especially the ones regarding Olaf and his accomplices.

In addition to all of these positives and negatives for each episode, there was also one massive positive for the entire series that was truly amazing. Throughout the show, we saw that each episode had a theme, specifically a word or a phrase with a variety of meanings. For example, one of these episode themes was the difference between Figuratively and Literally, and in this episode they were able to find creative ways to insert these words. This provided for funny, interesting, and helpful bits of information that you could walk out of the episode thinking about.

In conclusion, with or without all these flaws, this series is fantastic. It is a perfect adaptation of the book series, and each character was casted perfectly, specifically Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf.

I would give this series a 8.5/10.

If you haven’t already watched this series, you can look at it on Netflix. There is currently only one season, but, luckily for us, there is currently another season in the works.