Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the first of a series of sci-fi fantasy novels by Rick Riordan. This series has gotten two films in the past starring Logan Lerman as the titular demigod. Since Disney has acquired the rights to the series and has turned it into a streaming show instead of making more films. The series starts up right in the same place as the films with the first book in the series.

Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell), named after the Greek god Precious, is your average kid who goes to middle school. He has a best friend Grover (Aryan Simhadri), who has a hidden secret he’s keeping from Percy. Percy and Grover are bullied at school because they are a bit nerdy. His mother Sally Jackson (Virginia Kull) tries to console him but her husband and Percy’s stepfather isn’t any help because he’s not much different from the child bullies. He treats Percy pretty badly as well. Percy soon finds out that he’s more than just a nerdy teenager who gets picked on by everyone. He’s in fact a demigod and the son of the Greek god Poseidon.

After being attacked by winged demon women and a massive minotaur in a rainstorm Percy has arrived with his trusty friend Grover at a special camp where only the children of gods reside. This is called the veil where only gods and demigods can see and reside. There he meets other demigods Annabeth Chase (Leah Jefferies) and Luke Castellan (Charlie Bushnell) as well as gets mentoring from someone he thought was a teacher at his school Charon (Glynn Turman) who is in fact a Centaur, and Mr. D otherwise known as Dionysus (Jason Manzoukas). Together they help Percy prepare for a mission he must go on to save a loved one who is captured by Hades (Jay Duplass)

This series relies a lot on visual effects. There are quite a few characters that are half fantasy and half man. There are also plenty of magical sequences where a pen turns into a sword and various types of CGI are used to show all the magical stuff. Or dimensions that aren’t of this mortal coil. Such as hell or other nether realms. This show needs these effects to properly help tell this fantasy story based on these books. More often than not they are pretty good effects.

This season of Percy Jackson is very similar to the first film but a bit longer. With a series, there is more room to expand on the book. With these types of fantasy novels, there are subplots and so forth. That’s where a television/Streaming series benefits a book series like this. The characters are able to be expanded upon and better developed in a show rather than the constraints of a film. That’s where the Harry Potter films could have benefited greatly as well. There are a lot of characters in the series and most of them haven’t been touched on in the first four episodes. Which is what I got to watch.

The characters that have shown up so far are okay. Scobell as Percy is fine but I fear there wasn’t enough of a sample size to give a fair assessment of his performance. The same goes for the rest of the cast including Turman, Simhadri, and Kull. They are all adequate and not great so far. Jefferies on the other hand has intrigued me with her character. She brings something fresh to the series I wasn’t expecting. I’m sure the rest of the cast that hasn’t appeared yet will be fine in their various roles.

 Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a good show so far with a small sample to go off of. I am fascinated by where the series goes in the second half. Where bigger-named characters played by bigger-name celebrities will appear.  The cast introduced so far is just fine with Jefferies being the standout. The visual effects are very good though and they accompany the story nicely. The story as a whole adapted by Riordan from his book is good so far but as I’ve seen the film based on this book it didn’t blow me away because I already knew what was going to happen. It’s the second half that interests me the most. This is a fine show so far though. It just didn’t overwhelm me like I had hoped.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen