Instead of making her second telling of The Luminaries a pale imitation of its predecessor, she [Eleanor Catton] offers up yet another set of twins: two consummate works in two different mediums.

A cracking, challenging read has become a cracking, unchallenging series and both do their jobs perfectly. Joy.

The Luminaries is placidly entertaining, and Hewson is likable in a listless role that becomes the focus of the entire production, but it lacks any spark that might make it an essential watch.

The Luminaries doesn’t dig deep enough into its many possibilities—including any lore of the country it is set in—but Hewson’s soulful performance carries the show forward until its end.

Like the entire plot of “The Luminaries,” everything in this opening scene is overstuffed and hard to discern.

In trying to make this sprawling narrative TV-friendly, a narrative momentum has been lost, with too many characters and too many timelines and situations going on at the same time. The three leads, Patel, Hewson and Green, all do good jobs with their roles, but the show just feels like it’s going to wander in the wilderness like the delirious Anna before it figures out where to go.

Watching the first two-and-a-half hours was a bit like being in a drug-addled dream anyway: coherent in some places, baffling in others — weird timelines, plot strings as clear as mud and the production seeming perfectly content with that. The acting, though, is good. Commendable given that the actors are carrying the handicap of a complex novel confusingly boiled down to six episodes.