Hope it gets better

I had real high hopes for this and finally watched episode 1 today.

I came away feeling largely underwhelmed.
Maybe because I'm a fan of the whole culture of hip hop I was expecting a history lesson?
Ok, slightly naive on my part I'll admit and being a big-budget tv production it was always going to have an over-reliance on playing up to the commercial angle.

To the diehard hip hop fan all of this is old news and just going over old ground but to those who this series it mostly aimed at will be a great way of learning the culture and the various flashpoints in how it all came about - albeit with a fair amount of artistic licence.

The fact that anything like this actually made it to the screen is an achievement in itself so that should be applauded.
And I suppose that it would be nitpicking to point out odd pieces of misinformation scattered throughout the first episode; slang such as "diss" and "def" weren't around in 1977, the Furious 5's Cowboy had a very distinctive voice unlike the actor playing him and also using The Funky 4 Plus 1 name without including the original members was a tad cheeky.

The set pieces and scenery are luxurious and drip with mid-70's flavour. You can tell where the 120 million was largely spent.

Overall it's a brave attempt however by the second episode its' direction had slowed to a crawl and was in danger of becoming just another formulaic period drama.
I just hope it picks up as the majority of the cast are wonderful.