(TV SERIES) Resident Evil Season 1 - Despite Major Alterations, Still Interesting Series of the Fight Against Zombies & Umbrella Corporations in Resident Evil Universe

I almost missed out on this series and only realized it a day after its release. But as I was finishing up another series earlier, I just started it on Friday night and completed it yesterday. It was based on popular video games and have been adapted into several movies in the past which I liked. OK, will go straight to it now.

Brief Story Line

Story was set in two "timelines" with the present year 2036 where the T-virus have spread all over the world infecting billions of people who became zombies and the year 2022 before it happened. In the present, Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska - Charlie's Angels 2019 version etc) was looking for clues and ways for humans to co-exist with the zombies, while being hunted by the Umbrella Corporation led by Evelyn Marcus (Paola Núñez - Bad Boys for Life etc).

Back in the year 2022, a 14 year old Jade (Tamara Smart - A Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, The Worst Witch TV series etc) with her twin sister Billie (Siena Agudong - No Good Nick TV series etc) together with their father Albert Wesker (Lance Reddick - Angel Has Fallen, Bosch TV series etc) have just moved to New Raccon City. Albert was working as the top scientist for Umbrella Corporation. Things started to fall apart for the Weskers soon after their move to the city. 

So what actually happened that made the world heavily infected by the T-virus and why was Jade being hunted by the corporation? Some of the answers would  be found in the first season of this series.

End of Brief Story Line

As I said above, I like watching Resident Evil movies (the one where the lead character was Alice & the last movie in that franchise was Resident Evil: The Final Chapter) and even the reboot Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City which was still enjoyable for me. So watching this series was entertaining for me too. Despite the story was focusing from different angle and need some getting used to (two timelines were something that general audience might not like, but as I was quite accustomed to this, I had no problems with it), there were still some familiar things related to the games, like obviously umbrella corporation, raccoon city and Albert Wesker.

The first episode provided us what to expect with the quick moving zombies that attack in large number and the brutal scenes of killing them. The year 2022 timeline though would sometime be a bit of distraction to the intensity in the 2036 and slightly change the momentum. However, the going back and forth of 2022 & 2036 became smoother as the story progressed, especially since they were portrayed by different cast. And Lance Reddick was great too. Btw, I was quite shocked with the development in episode 7 and at first thought it to be weird, but later I remembered that it was not too far stretched in the Resident Evil franchise. 

The series itself had 8 episodes with duration between 46 to a little over 1 hour. I especially like the 2036 story line as it was more fast paced with zombies (and monsters) attacks most of the time. Although if I have to be critical, I felt that sometimes the scenes were too dark at nights. But in general the action were well done. My favorites were episode 4 with some awesome action sequence and obviously season finale which was pretty spectacular. To my surprise, episode 5 was quite interesting with some nice story development too.

I understand that the series was getting mixed reaction from critics, but it was really not well received by fans of the games due to too much deviation. For me though, this series was entertaining in its own and I think would be more enjoyable if we are not really bothered by some of the alterations and the different focus in characters. As long as we still got the bad Umbrella Corporation with its vast armies and the many many dangerous zombies, then it is still entertaining for zombie genre fans like myself. The cast were quite OK too, in particular obviously Reddick and Núñez who were praised for their performance. The young Tamara Smart and Siena Agudong were not bad, except maybe a little bit too much screaming at times. Oh, there was also the support cast of Turlough Convery as Umbrella's personnel Baxter, Conor Gosatti as Simon and Adeline Rudolph (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina TV series etc) as someone important to the story. 

Overall to me, this is a cool zombie series set in the Resident Evil universe where the focus was not the drama or characters development and interaction among the zombie apocalypse survivors, but mainly on how to survive the zombie & Umbrella Corp. The two timelines were pretty unique too in this series which made us intrigued on how the year 2022 could turn into the devastating condition of 2036. So if you are looking for something like this, and love some good action plus well enough special effects, then likely you would enjoy it like I did. However if you are hard core fans of Resident Evil games, then probably you would not enjoy it as there were too many alterations. For me though, I could not wait for the series to be renewed so I can see more of the zombies, monsters and Umbrella Corp wreaking havoc.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars