Halo review – hit sci-fi game morphs into middling $200m TV series

The much-hyped adaptation of the phenomenally successful video game crash lands on TV with impressive visuals but not much else

Quite how Halo hasn't made it to the screen, small or big, before this is an enigma almost as nebulous as the long-running first person shooter video game's crowded mythos. Luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and District 9's Neill Blomkamp have all been involved in trying to get a film based on the explosive exploits of Masterchief across the line for the best part of two decades, yet to no avail. Even this big-budget - it reputedly cost more than $200m and looks like gold - TV series starring Pablo Schreiber as the genetically engineered soldier-hero of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) has been held up for two years by Covid.

Never mind, it's here now, and fans of the games who just want to see their nightly battles with giant space monsters played out on the TV screen will no doubt be more than content with Kyle Killen and Steven Kane's adventurous if somewhat insipid reimagining. Unfortunately, those of us who don't recognise every re-enacted power-up bleep and helmet-cam vision of destruction will probably find ourselves wondering, much of the time, quite what is going on.

Halo imagines a galaxy set in the 26th century in which the ruling UNSC finds itself under attack from a theocratic alien invading force known as the Covenant, while also at times coming into conflict with frontier settlers on distant planets who bristle under centralised control. To complicate the picture, the Covenant are obsessed with giant, habitable space structures known as the Halo Array, which were left behind by ancient beings known as the Forerunners.