It is common for adaptations of successful books to a short series or movie to disappoint their readers: it is impossible to condense the full complexity of a story told in hundreds of pages into a few hours. The case of All the Light We Cannot See, based on Anthony Doerr’s novel set in World War II that won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2015, is paradigmatic of what abounds on Netflix. The four-episode miniseries is well-crafted but thin on substance. It is impeccable in production, aesthetics, settings… But the characters lack depth.
That’s the principal flaw of the series created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), which, despite everything, is watchable. Compared to the many years covered by the novel, the series begins in the final stretch, in the photogenic town of Saint-Malo, Brittany, in the north of Nazi-occupied France, waiting for the Normandy landings. And it narrates…
