As a sci-fi fan, I am prone to automatically bump up the rating of any sci-fi movie or TV series, since my imagination is easily captured by futuristic technology, post-apocalyptic landscapes and hitherto unseen foes. This BBC mini-series met all three of these criteria, yet the highest praise I could muster after watching it was, "it's alright".

• The plot unfolded just a bit too slowly to keep me engaged.
• The characters were one-dimensional and unrelatable, so I didn't get emotionally invested in their survival.
• It felt like there weren't quite enough people populating the scenes.
• The show never even alluded to what was going on in other parts of the country or the world. I know the book doesn't cover that, but I would have liked to see how people in other countries handled the alien invasion. The series deviated from the book already, so such an explanation was certainly on the table.

That covers the majority of the negatives. But the series also had positives:

• The architecture and smog of 1910s Britain seemed realistic. London was a real filth-hole, and that was before the aliens invaded!
• The juxtaposition of futuristic Martian tech with 1910s British weaponry was well done. The Martian tech was not indestructible, but clearly much more advanced.
• The levitating "meteorites" raining fire upon bystanders was intense and surreal.
• I wasn't expecting the aliens to look like 3-legged spiders. That was imaginative.
• Despite the devastation of the alien weaponry, characters still died from trivial things like being crushed by a falling wall, or dehydration.

So all up, not a terrible rendition of H.G. Wells' book, but also not one I'm eager to watch again.