The Watch, Season 1 (2021)

 

In the sprawling fantasy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork, all business - including criminal business - is regulated by the guilds.  You can book a mugging for a time and place that's convenient to you, and get an official Thieves' Guild receipt for your trouble.  You can also be sure that said guild will dynamically address any unregulated crime that is committed against you.

Unsurprisingly, this means that there are few jobs in town with less prestige than being in the constabulary.  Who cares about the police when they basically can't actually enforce any laws and aren't needed to investigate any crimes?

As you might expect, this doesn't exactly make the Watch an attractive employment prospect, and it has become more or less a place of refuge for those who don't fit in anywhere else.  They're not the most prepossessing lot, but when a real life Dragon threatens the city, they may be its only hope ...

This series was inspired by the "City Watch" books from the Discworld series of fantasy novels by Terry Pratchett. Even before it came out, it provoked a hostile reaction from fans of the novels for departing too far from the books' medieval origins, delving into "punk rock" visuals, and changing or removing characters.

Personally, I'm okay with all those changes.  The punk-style visuals work okay, and the changes in character gender and details are all actually relatively okay: at least they haven't taken minority characters and made them all white dudes.  Plus the cast all work really hard to sell the roles.

Instead, my issues with The Watch are entirely about the plot.  For some reason, the writers appear to have decided to drag in elements from multiple different novels from the series - certainly at least three, possibly four or five - and in an eight episode season it's just way too much stuff.  The show's early momentum is frittered away by the constant diversions needed to jam in yet another story element, and the final two episodes are a complete mess as the writers try to juggle way more balls than they can actually handle.