It could very well be that if you are a chess player you might like this series; apparently the games are authentic -- not just people randomly putting chess pieces around a board as if they know what they are doing - i.e., as it appeared to me, a non-chess player. Chess in every form and permutation is portrayed here -- old, young, angry, calm, upside-down, looking at the ceiling, speeded up, slowed down, adjourned, not adjourned, in the basement, in a hotel room, single players, multiple players, one person against several players, men vs women, women vs women - it's still boring as all get out probably even to a chess player! There is just so many ways to make a chess game look interesting and I think this movie exhausted every one and then was left with nothing, except for players looking soulfully into each other's eyes, especially the heroine whose main talent were those huge, blank, staring eyes. Apart from this, which face it formed only about 1/2 the series, the rest was filled in with every cliché in the book about -- 1) orphanages 2) growing up a woman in the chauvinistic 50's and 60's 3) nerdy chess players 4) the French 5) the Russians, you name it, there is a clichéed depiction of it. I gave the series a 2 and not a 1 because I somehow managed to get through it right to the bitter end.