Hacker Cinema
Watchmen
2019 · TV series · 1 season
Created by Damon Lindelof
DramaCrimeScience FictionFantasyMystery
Set in an alternate history where “superheroes” are treated as outlaws, “Watchmen” embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel while attempting to break new ground of its own.
23 positive3 negative1 mixed14 neutralfrom 41 commenters
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44 comments on Hacker News
I can swear by anything that Lindelof does for TV
Lost, The Leftovers, Watchmen, Mrs Davis: they are all great
Can't wait for Lanterns.
(His movies career is... less good. He shines in serialized stories I guess)
I remember when it hadn't come out and there were mostly images and speculation I was really concerned that Lindelof had no idea what he's doing. A friend who watches a lot more TV than me insisted when it did release that it was very good, and reluctantly I agreed to watch Episode 1, and I knew immediately he got it and I was hooked. Watchmen is about masks, what masks mean, what it means when people wear masks, and Lindelof's TV show takes this somewhere the original book didn't but still remains about masks.
I knew about Tulsa, about Black Wall Street but I didn't know there was actually a plane. I was like, "That's surely creative license" when I saw it. But nope, the racists actually had a fucking plane.
> Conservatives Take Aim at ‘One Battle After Another’: “Year’s Most Irresponsible Movie”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/one-battle-after-another-conservative-reactions-1236394128/
> Netflix's 93% RT Hit Show That Has the U.S. Government Furious Is a Streaming Sensation
https://collider.com/netflix-boots-streaming-success-after-government-backlash-october-2025/
And that’s before we’ve even touched HBO. John Oliver is probably the most obvious example. But I’d say shows like Watchmen count too. Fahrenheit 451. Succession was pretty clearly mocking FOX News and its media ecosystem.
Art that’s critical of the government doesn’t literally have to be shouting “Trump bad”, it can be done through critique or mocking of the values it holds.
I don't think it's fair to characterise all "comic book" films as being immature, although there's a lot of shallow super-hero films being pumped out of Hollywood these days. Maybe if more people in the U.S. were familiar with "V For Vendetta" (despite Alan Moore's loathing for that film) then their attitude towards government might well be different.
(Trying to think of another good example and the Watchmen series tackled racism head-on, also Persepolis is a great animation covering the Iranian revolution)
Just a handful of Western comics you can pick up and read today:
The Sandman (Netflix show), The Best We Could Do, Pride of Baghdad, Superman American Alien, Superman Red Son (animated), I Hate Fairyland, Bone, Epileptic, Paper Girls (turned into an live action show), Monstress, Saga, The Watchmen (turned into a terrible movie, an adaptation show, and an animated show), Stumptown (also got a show I believe), Daytripper, Maus, Berlin…
You are in the minority. Huge chunks of society were surprised by the Watchmen episode.
My AP US History introduced the civil war section by saying despite his personal beliefs, he was teaching us to pass the exam and any discussion about the war being over slavery and not state's rights was a waste of class time as that would not get us a four or five on the test.
Yes, the same thing is happening for movies and TV shows. Practically every major movie is either a boring superhero movie or a remake. It’s because movie studios don’t want to take a risk on something new and creative that could flop. They want dependable profits.
I just pointed out Watchmen as a rare example where the producers took a big risk by making it about racism and violent extremism. Even though it was a superhero show, it felt fresh due to the new take and ideas.
It rankled a lot of feathers in the process, likely reinforcing Hollywood’s desire to continue making cookie cutter shows instead.
And about Harry Potter - it did a great job of evolving throughout the series to stay fresh. The kids grew up, learned new types of magic, and had constantly changing relationships for one thing.
Also, the series constantly introduced new and interesting characters or killed off extremely popular characters as well.
There was even an installment that heavily made use of time travel, which I thought was depicted in a really cool and satisfying way.
I can see how that could be interesting, but I didn't enjoy it cause I saw it as a perversion of an awesome character. That's a problem writers face when they reinterpret beloved series/stories. I've hated nearly all the recent TV/movie adaptations that were based on written series I love - foundation, eye of the world, the lotr show, watchmen, come to mind. One exception was the Dune movie, which I thought was rad, even though it didn't entirely align with the way I imagined it, their interpretation was great.
With these types of shows, the TV writing will almost certainly be orders of magnitude worse since the originals were written by great authors with great imaginations. So, the more the TV writers try to innovate, the more glaring it's likely to be to fans of the originals. Plus, the innovation typically involves TV writers just ham-fistedly hacking in the drama de jour. I just can't treat the TV versions as independent from the source material when I try to watch them.
You’re truly all over the place here, but as to your “straw man” point, I was responding to these comments:
> Many times the "rightwing media" driven review bombing is about beloved series being damaged/unfaithful.
> The Watchmen TV show is a horrible example as it's literally fan-fiction with little to no real connection to the graphic novel. So that fact alone pissed a lot of people off.
Both are implying that new entries in a series should stick closely to previous entries. I don’t think being “unfaithful” or changing certain details is wrong if it’s necessary to tell a different story.
And for games, are you really going to defend how developers make essentially the same Call of Duty and Halo over and over again and sell it for $60?
I never said that games have no replay value, and now you are the one attacking a straw man. I’m criticizing when new entries in a series bring nothing new to the table.
I think anti-woke review bombing is vastly overestimated. I think the opposite is more common honestly news articles get written about something being "review bombed" and then you get a much larger sea of 5 stars artificially inflating the score.
The Watchmen TV show is a horrible example as it's literally fan-fiction with little to no real connection to the graphic novel. So that fact alone pissed a lot of people off.
It completely ignored the only actual "squeal" (Doomsday Clock) to create the story they wanted to tell while borrow the popularity of the name to get attention.
Even ignoring all that did you actually even watch it? 96% is complete bullshit. 96% means some of the best TV ever made. I don't think it's a 56% but the 56% is way closer to reality then the 96%.
Low audience vs critic reviews can also indicate review bombing. This often happens on films or TV shows targeted by rightwing media for being too “woke”.
The show that always sticks in my mind as an example is HBO’s Watchmen, which has 96% with critics and 56% with the audience.
These shows are artistic creations. When it's clear that the painting is unfinished, and the artist's vision and intent incomplete, why bother? Not every show is like this, many say what they have to say in a single episode (many sitcoms, police procedurals) or season (e.g., Hacks, Watchmen, The Wire). But there are a lot of shows that are just unfinished works-in-progress without the end of their story.
Watchmen was amazing, so I don't understand the issue. Each individual episode was carefully, and cleverly, crafted. We were watching several other popular shows at the same time, and the contrast was really apparent, with Watchmen in a completely different league.
Agree, Season2 was already deteriorating from episode to episode, with the finale making me wonder how they expect to progress in another season.
By Season4 the aimless world-building reached a degree that it's unlikely they could ever connect back to the same audience as Season1...
HBO's Watchmen on the other hand...a pity that they killed it after just one season...
Clerks - $27,575 [0]
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - $56,000 [1]
Butt Boy - $100,000 [2]
The Blue - <$100k [3]
Call Me Brother - <$100k [3]
Frances Ferguson - <$100k [3]
Greenlight - <$100k [3]
Love in Dangerous Times - <$100k [3]
Man in Camo - <$100k [3]
I'm going to stop now but I hope I've made my point. I've watched many of the above. I've heard about most of the above.
Your tone is pretty snarky so I'm not sure if it's worth responding but here is a list of TV shows, all within the last decade, that I believe are exceptional and not limited to "just the Sopranos":
* Chernobyl
* Rick and Morty
* True Detective
* Fargo
* Severance
* 1883
* Mindhunter
* Westworld
* The Knick
* The Peripheral
* Succession
* Years and Years
* Orange is the New Black
* Halt and Catch Fire
* Insecure
* Watchmen
* Atlanta
This is only from 10 minutes of searching. You'll note that many of them are produced, directed, written and star high profile artists. The subject matter that they deal with can be done at a pace and care that's impossible to do with a 2-3 hour movie. The quality of the above series or mini-series was virtually non existent, maybe with some very few exceptions, before 2000 and only began to pick up pace in 2000 to 2010.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks_(film)
[1] https://byrdtheatre.org/news/2019/10/a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night-brings-beauty-to-vampires/
[2] https://www.cautionspoilers.com/film-reviews/butt-boy/
[3] https://musiccitydrivein.com/2021/02/19/film-threat-award-this-announces-2021-indie-film-nominees-for-drive-in-event-virtual-ceremony/
Watchmen is a Lindelof show, but well worth watching.
> I was not holding out much hope when "Damon Lindelof producer of Lost, decided what we really needed was for him to create a new TV series in the Watchman universe"
Well, Lindelof was also the showrunner for The Leftovers, which was a profoundly moving and well-made show. He also co-wrote the Alien prequel Prometheus. I wasn't too surprised that his Watchmen show was good!
Anyway, as for Neuromancer... Graham Roland was showrunner for Dark Winds, which was pretty solid, so maybe that bodes well. On the other hand, his writing work on Lost was entirely just on the final season, which was a nonsensical mess, so who knows.
I try to keep an open mind.
e.g. I was not holding out much hope when "Damon Lindelof producer of Lost, decided what we really needed was for him to create a new TV series in the Watchman universe"
Whether Neuromancer works out, I have no idea. There's no end of money being wasted by the streamers on prestigious properties - but occasionally you'll get a Watchmen or Good Omens or Sandman.
Other positive is that we're living in a time where these can be "done justice". If it needs to cost $15M an hour to make and run for 10 hours to tell the story properly - well it now can be made.
It might not be told well, it might make bile spew from my very core - but somebody can have a crack at it.
The issue with this season is that while the comics are beloved, the first book is quite weak; Gaiman was still finding his voice, still experimenting with what the books were going to be, and constrained by editorial requirements from DC. The first several issues are full of cringey tie-ins to other DC IP, and the horror elements are forced (The Sandman is not a horror comic series).
If you're not a Sandman stan, my advice is to watch episode 1, and then episode 5, skipping 2-4. The first actually-good episode is 6; the Hob Gadling stuff is sort of emblematic of the the comic grows into, so if you like it, you'll like the rest of it.
If you are a Sandman stan, something to note is that they seem to have deliberately severed it from the DC Universe. I'm surprised at how many elements of the first and second book turn out to be been DC tie-ins; for instance, Hector and Lyta Hall in Dolls House were I guess defined by other DC comics? Anyways, they've gone out of their way to cut all that stuff out the series.
I think most of the changes are for the better.
I think the series is fine.
I was way, way into Sandman when I was younger.
This show isn't in my Top N list. I'm curious to see if it gets renewed.
By comparison, the HBO Watchmen series is not only one of the best comic book adaptations of all time, but also one of my favorite TV series of the last 10 years.
From what I bore to watch, it's a quite faithful adaptation - even if somewhat simplified.
As someone who only read a bunch of those 80s/90s "transgressive" comic books in the late 2000s-early 2010s, thanks to the wonders of the Web (and never saw any sign of anyone else having heard of these particular works in my godforsaken corner of the world, though Gaiman is somewhat known for his collabs with Pratchett), I could draw comparison with "Preacher" and "The Boys" (based on the eponymous works by Garth Ennis), which seem to be doing the whole "comic book to TV show because we bought off all the counterculture and are consequently running out of interesting intellectual property" thing a bit better. Taking more liberties with the source material, too; adding stuff that wasn't in the book but bears the original spirit.
Interestingly enough, those are also more grittier and less "politically correct" tales - even though their protagonists also tend to espouse enlightened views of radical acceptance, and the underlying message seems to be that the real antagonist is not just some entrenched establishment of crooked power mongers, but the mass of NPCs who enable them. Guess violence is timeless and magical realism is only relevant in the context of specific historical moments of cultural transition - who would've known?
Of course, there's comparatively less of that particular conflict overtly represented in the Sandman - it's one of those metaphysical things where most of the action happens in the characters' inner worlds. (Maybe that's why they thought it was such a timeless tale that recasting some of the characters as non-Gothic would be sufficient modernization?) Still, I consider Gaiman's work part of the same campaign of guerilla cultural warfare that was conducted around the turn of the century by teaching the kids lateral thinking, imagination, and of course emotional literacy and compassion. And of course the kids took that and went to become salaried creatives building nostalgic simulacra to mask the terminal disenchantment of the world (no enchantment -> no hope -> workers don't breed). So, yeah, guess we lost that one.
Finally got around to reading William Gibson's "Blue Ant" trilogy, and boy oh boy does the man have a good handle on how the media machine acts to transform artworks and the human experiences that art glorifies into a uniform bland "concept soup". Guess they'll start shooting shows from his desiccated corpus next. (Heard it here first, folks!)
All in all a Constantine/Watchmen tier adaptation. Don't waste time watching it, just torrent the original comic books and enjoy.
Alan Moore's not associated with HBO's Watchmen show. In fact, if you're seeing a version of his work on TV, in movies, or... any other format than his original comic you can be assured not only does he have nothing to do with it but he likely despises it.
I like this quote from Lindelof - the HBO Watchmen showrunner - on Quartz's piece for the show's debut[1], “There is no version of Watchmen I could make that would please him. Not only that, but there’s no version of Watchmen I could make that he would ever watch.”.
Moore's a genius and the HBO Watchmen show's amazing. I adore that both coexist.
1 - https://qz.com/quartzy/1732050/why-alan-moore-wants-nothing-to-do-with-hbos-watchmen/
It reminds me the Watchmen. Alan Moore talked about how he despised the fans that identified with Rorschach :
Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?’”
A few years after this interview he wrote the TV show, where the main antagonists are the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremist group that follows Rorschach's teachings.
I have been ruined for most "cape" films for the last decade or so by reading a brilliant reconstruction of, well, the vast majority of cape concepts, tropes, settings, powers and such in a web serial called Worm, which is an enormous work set in an Earth where "powers" began to appear in certain people, called parahumans, around 1982. The sequel, Ward tackles even the more abstract concepts, like identity against the Revolving Door of Death in comics.
Probably the best cape thing I have come across since Watchmen.
This is what-about-ism. I am surprised you didn't mention that we are less free to smoke in public places!
Here's the thing: Laws about where you can smoke and drink vary from place to place in the US but in every part of them you are free to complain about them. The laws were passed by elected officials. You can start a petition to change them. You can run for mayor on the platform of changing the rules about where you can smoke or drink.
I agree that it is a sad commentary that many Americans don't know about the Tulsa race riot. Yet here we are discussing it. A popular TV show in the US (The Watchmen) depicted it quite graphically. Could those things happen with Tiananmen Square in China?
Prime whataboutism. But anyways, just as one example, the Tulsa race massacre was the subject of a major recent TV series (The Watchmen). Mere mentions of Tiananmen square massacre, observing quiet vigils, etc. could get you jailed in China. On freedom of speech, there is no possible comparison. Even the existence of this very conversation would be immediately censored on the Chinese domestic internet.
Haven't seen either, I assume the Crown covered the emotional effect on the Queen, no idea what Watchmen is - it's the film with the glowing man with a dong isn't it?
To me, Tulsa is either 24 hours away, or the place Chandler went to for Christmas in Friends.
I liked every limited run TV show you mentioned that I've seen (Russian Doll, The Queen's Gambit, Watchmen), so I think maybe I should watch the rest.
It's at the top of my list.
Incidentally I went look for the best limited series shows, but aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes do a poor job separating them from other TV shows. Right now I see "Watchmen: Season 1" and "Unbelievable: Season 1" which as far as I know were only meant to be one season. Yet Chernobyl and Mare of Easttown are labeled as Miniseries and Limited Series, respectively. What's the difference between the two labels? Why hasn't someone went back and updated the database? Why can't I filter by ongoing versus limited?
I've moved from watching movies and TV shows without end to watching limited series/anthology shows. The format hits the sweet spot between watching a self contained story and the anticipation of a TV show. I don't think the format gets the love it deserves, but networks like Disney+ (most of Marvel's recent outings), Netflix (Godless, Russian Doll, Alias Grace, The Queen's Gambit, The Haunting of Hill House), and HBO (The Night Of, Watchmen, The Outsider) certainly understand the benefits and have been amassing a quiet army of content.
“In all things I yearn for the past. Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased. I find that even among the splendid pieces of furniture built by our master cabinetmakers, those in the old forms are the most pleasing.”
Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), Yoshida Kenkō 1330 - 1332 AD
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-the-oldest-authentic-example-of-people-complaining-about-modern-times-an
Congrats on joining the long, proud, ancient history of saying society is going to hell.
—
But as to contemporary TV: it ain’t junk. You want to see junk? Go back to the 1970s. Three’s Company? The Love Boat? The Brady Bunch? Any of the awful cheesey variety shows? Modern TV is vastly, hugely better than what it used to be, in terms of acting, cinematography, and music. And I’d argue more intellectually challenging—so many of the hit shows have long, ongoing arcs, instead of standalone episodes, that require viewers to get invested and understand the plot threads. Takes a lot more brainpower to keep track of what’s going on in Watchmen than The Dukes of Hazzard.
I agree with your core sentiment on movies - but I couldn't disagree more on the topic of TV having reverted to the mean.
It may not all be "Sopranos", but I've seen so many TV shows in the past decade that have pushed boundaries and delivered experiences that frankly, have hit me much harder than almost any movie - and certainly much harder than pre-netflix era TV.
I know everyone has different taste, but I think we've seen a lot of maturation in the past decade specifically in the form of more interesting TV anthology series / single-season narratives (True Detective, Fargo, Watchmen) and dark-ish comedies (Rick and Morty, Barry, American Vandal, Succession). I think networks in general are giving show-runners more space and budget for trying weird stuff, because even if they end up with a show that's too niche for a general timeslot - there's at least the possibility of selling it to a streaming service later (like Arrested Development, The Expanse, and Community did).
I went into a rabbit hole exploring race relations in US and Europe after watching this opening scene from Watchmen the TV show[1]. Powerful stuff. History being written by the victors and all that.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xijkosNCzTg
>Why can't you just enjoy a one or two well done seasons?
Not OP, but I share the opinion. For my viewing there are basically two types of shows. The first is relatively mindless entertainment. I enjoy an episode here or there but I'm not invested in the plot. I'm not watching YouTube recaps and "explainers" after the episodes, and I'm not engaged in a community where we discuss the plot and predict where things are going. Barry is a good example of that. Ted Lasso is another good example.
Then there are the shows where I get invested in the plot and story. Shows where I am theorizing with my wife, watching YouTube videos on it, and discussing it online. Shows such as Westworld or Game of Thrones.
There are some shows that straddle the line well, but you usually know ahead of time. Watchmen falls into that category. Single season, compelling drama, had me engaged the whole time, and it was a single season. But I knew it was going to be a single season from the start.
This is the same reason I typically try not to read unfinished trilogies. Patrick Rothfuss and GRRM have ruined me.
> the liberation of social discourse and media from establishment institutions.
Liberation? Establishment institutions drive social discourse, there's no need to be "liberated" from them. From the New York Times 1619 project, to Hollywood movies like 12 Years a Slave or the Watchmen series, to the various grievance studies in schools and universities.
Please don't pretend you're the plucky rebels when giant corporations cloak themselves in BLM logos.
When I saw the footage in the Watchmen, I thought it was a made-up event for the TV show. I was appalled to discover it really happened.
I also think it's worrisome that this was posted 4 hours ago and mine is the first comment on it.
I get that there is a anti-political stuff sentiment on hacker News and that makes sense but this still needs to be discussed.
I'm not a US citizen, I wasn't aware the Tulsa bombing happened, I thought this was only a fictional event that happened at the beginning of the Watchmen TV series. That's horrifying..
It’s not exactly an adaptation, but the recent miniseries sequel to Watchmen (the graphic novel, not the movie) is, implausibly, outstanding and very much feels right, as a continuation of the story.
This is the one depicted in the new "Watchmen" series on HBO btw. A great watch for fans of the original comic or film.
Probably not interesting to history or civil rights buffs though.
Maybe? Between the DVR and TV from non-ad sources, we rarely see any commercials at all -- and yet my wife and I both routinely have another screen up during SOME shows.
We find there are two kinds of movies/TV: stuff that's kinda just relaxing and during which you can browse twitter or whatever, and stuff that's more serious where you can't really multitask without missing important aspects of the show, either because of the filming style or the density of the material or the pace of events or whatever.
The canonical example of the latter is The Wire. More recently, I'd put The Crown or Watchmen in this category. For the former, well, pretty much any traditional network show counts.
However, even in high-attention programming, it's pretty common for one of us to pause the show and check a screen to verify where we saw a given actor before, or look up a related bit of information (e.g., during the Crown, we often check on historical context).
Yeah, for a example currently on TV watch the most recent episode of Watchmen. The racial divide has closed wildly since the 1960s, and simply because tech gives alt-right a platform doesn't make them any bigger than they were on their Oregon compounds decades ago.
Beside the HBO adaptation of Watchmen, I'm also watching the Amazon adaptation of The Boys right now. It addresses the übermensch-worship-culture even more directly. Highly recommended (though not as highly as Watchmen).
> I can't recommend watching HBO's Watchmen enough.
Fair warning though: Damon Lindelof is responsible for Lost and The Leftovers, which had notoriously unsatisfying conclusions. Some of the plot arcs are starting to terminate with actual plot movement, so there is hope that the season might achieve some form of closure. If this show finishes after one season and succeeds in telling a coherent story, I will be surprised.
There's no timelier follow up to Alan Moore's stance on superhero culture than Damon Lindelof's Watchmen which is currently in the middle of its first (and likely only) season run on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/watchmen
It's not only a high-flying feat of television writing, acting, and directing. It's something Moore will likely never endorse or even see (he's apparently denounced any adaptation/continuation of his work) and yet embodies the spirit of Watchmen better than anything I've ever seen in the genre.
Lindelof and Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin records an hourlong podcast (https://www.hbo.com/watchmen/watchmen-listen-to-official-podcast) for HBO talking about the genesis of show, its relationship with the Zach Snyder movie (respect for the form, detachment from the execution and alterations), and the very subject of this BBC piece: people who wear masks to enact vigilante justice are and should be concerning.
The parallels between 1985 and 2019 malaise, worldwide unrest, and that awful feeling that something's not quite right with the way the world is running are incredible well capture by the show.
Whether you've read the graphic novel or not, I can't recommend watching HBO's Watchmen enough. Even if you dismiss it as an unworthy heir to Moore and Gibbon's work, you will without a doubt be blown away by the show and how impeccably crafted it is.
For detail-hungry folks, the show's writing staff is release ancillary material that expands on the world (re)building within the show at https://www.hbo.com/peteypedia. Obviously don't read this before you watch each specific episode.
PS: I found the premise of the Amazon's The Boys interesting but beyond some impressive sequences and shocking twists, the show's writing is a bit too cynically shallow for its own good. There's not much commentary beyond the rottenness of (almost) every character in the show and that ends up feeling a little too much of one-note throughout the whole season.
I read about it a few years ago and was as surprised as all of you are.
In case people are wondering why it is all over the press, the HBO series Watchmen (apparently, only tangentially related to the comic/movie of the same name) just launched this past Sunday and it opens with a dramatization of this event.
Reading about it doesn't really capture what it is like to see the dramatization.