Tunde (Toheeb Jimoh) is a Nigerian journalist trotting the globe to document the epochal shift. In London, Roxy is the unacknowledged child of an infamous crime lord (Eddie Marsan) trying to right a wrong. The selectively mute Allie (Halle Bush) is on the run from South Carolina after escaping her unsavory foster parents. Margot Cleary-Lopez (Toni Collette) is still a mayor, though she now serves Seattle rather than an unspecified small town in Wisconsin. But the majority of story beats survive the transition, along with most of the core characters -of which there are quite a few. Alderman, who developed the series alongside Raelle Tucker and Sarah Quintrell, sheared off the more literary elements of the novel, which is semi-epistolary and peppered with footnotes. And so here is “The Power,” a decently executed and mostly faithful screen adaptation that undermines itself by demonstrating why a novel is the perfect format for this story.įans of the book will be relieved to find the text mostly intact, save for some minor cosmetic changes. But it’s also overstuffed, teeming with more characters and ideas than can be successfully scaled for television. The book, in which teenage girls across the globe discover their ability to wield electricity, is cinematic in scope and concept. The cleverly gender-flipped scene represents “The Power” at its best, and there are thrilling moments throughout the show that justify the reportedly intense bidding war for the rights to Alderman’s novel. “I’m not going in ‘til he smiles at me,” she says, goading him until he approximates joy. The bouncer immediately backs down, now aware of the mortal threat Roxy poses, but she isn’t finished toying with him. The swole sentinel manning the door tries to turn her away until Roxy creates a tiny lightning bolt between her thumb and index finger.

In an episode of “ The Power,” Prime Video’s series adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s acclaimed speculative novel, Roxy (Ria Zmitrowicz) tries to walk into a nightclub without flashing the ID that would reveal she’s underage.

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