Percy Jackson and the Olympians Review

Riordan spent a decade publicly unhappy with the films made from his books, then co wrote the series himself, and the difference registers immediately. Percy is twelve again, the quest structure is followed rather than compressed, and the jokes are the ones on the page. Critics were positive for the first season and warmer still for the second, which reviewers treated as the version the project had been aiming at all along: bigger, faster and less obviously assembled on a soundstage.

Walker Scobell carries it, dry where the films were earnest, and Leah Sava Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri fill out a trio that sounds like children rather than junior adults. Lin-Manuel Miranda as Hermes and Jason Mantzoukas as Dionysus are the adult casting highlights. The persistent problem is money. Monsters are lit to hide them, Olympus is a corridor, and set pieces that sprawl across chapters in the books happen in small rooms because a small room is what the effects budget could carry.

The first season in particular stages a road trip across America almost entirely in close up. As children's television it is unusually well made. As spectacle it is always negotiating.