Over stays it's welcome. The quality of the source material saves the series. Unlike what many believe, this show is not a one-to-one adaptation of the book, there are some things added, and some removed. Although, I don't think anything that was removed was required for the rest of the story. Ye Wenjie's relationship with her father, and the effect of his death on her subconscious was one thing that was omitted for the worse, IMO.

And being predominantly created for the mainland China audience, there is quite a bit of PRC-execptionalism, and well-executed censorship underlying most of the writing. I had expected that, and I suspect the Netflix adaptation to have a lot of west-exceptionalism underlying its writing. It's a departure from the underlying tones of humanity-over-nations I felt from reading the books.

Unfortunately, from what I hear the Netflix adaptation is far too compressed, where it comes and goes before you get a chance to sit down.