Viewing recommendation: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Everyone in my family has read Daniel Handler's excellent series of 13 kids' books, A Series of Unfortunate Events. We also enjoyed the 2004 movie by the same name starring Jim Carrey which retold the first three books. We've always been sad that that movie never had a sequel, leaving the story in limbo.

But now Netflix has come to the rescue! This weekend, Carol and I started watching Netflix's new streaming series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf and Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket, and absolutely love it. We're only two episodes in, covering the events of the first book. I was reading some online comments and the consensus is that subsequent episodes get better and better. If true, this is a going to be a fantastic show, because the first two episodes were great.

They're covering each book with two, approximately one hour long episodes, which means they'll use 26 episodes (over three seasons) to tell the entire story. It's an incredible way to tell what is a dark, nuanced, funny, clever, and tangled story, so I'm really excited about it. It's clear from the first two episodes that they're layering in a few new characters and twists, but they're staying very close to the books.

If you're interested (and you should be), here's the trailer in an earlier post.

Edited to add: The show has a real Pushing Daisies vibe, which is another reason to recommend it.