I really enjoyed this series. I'm sad it got so many bad reviews. I feel like people are so spoiled - do they expect every show to be like GOT? Ya so this show is a little mixed up - they overlay all these Greek myths onto a place and time called 'Atlantis' which doesn't really make sense according to the 'Atlantis' we normally refer to but I thought it was a cool idea. This is a fantasy genre, really, and in this genre everything goes - kind of like 'Into the Woods' or 'Once Upon a Time' where the retelling of fairytales gets all mixed up. That's the idea - they are not trying to be historically 'accurate' - and, besides, what accurate history do we have of 'Atlantis'?
I thought the costumes were fine - I loved the queens' dresses and adornments. I thought the acting was great, honestly. It's more of a lighthearted show with some humor threaded through (thanks to Hercules and Pythagoras) which I felt was pretty well done. I appreciate the lightheartedness of it, and the PG-13 status, instead of the usual heavy graphic violence. This is a good show for young teens, perhaps (and adults like me looking for engaging fantasy series)
All in all, I think the overall story was captivating and made sense for the most part. It was imaginative and creative how the writers wove it all together. They do a good job of cliffhangers so you just have to watch the next episode to find out what will happen! So much time and money goes into a production like this and I just want to give a positive review because I think they deserve it! Really bummed they decided to cancel it. There are so many shows that are really worthless that they decide to continue instead.

So, nothing ever actually has any meaning. even the premise that he is from the future is pretty much forgotten after the fist episode. It is fun in a 'Xena' kinda way, but apart from that it is one series of stupid choice after another where absolutely nothing even tries to make logical sense. Add to that, the exact same lines get reused like crazy..

Guess they FIRED the camera crew for Season 2. "Hand-held meth withdrawal" shaking, jittering, unstable enough to hurt the eyes. Filming is VERY DARK, not even correct exposure to make more than about 20% of a scene viewable.

Sad to watch something die in front of you. WHO thought this was filmed and edited well enough to pass 6th grade film class? Actually, 6th graders would have used cell phones with better cameras and stabilization than Season 2 seemed to hire.

Watch Season 1, dump Season 2. Should be held up as an example of "Stupid filming methods to avoid" in film schools across the world.

I am finding out what the BBC shows are like thanks to Prime. I loved the Ms. Fisher episodes along with Doc Martin. Atlantis was much like Merlin and I enjoyed both. Season 2 bogged down a bit but I stuck with it and enjoyed most of it. I was hoping that it continued on to season 3 but alas it did not. I am always looking for more entertainment from the BBC.

If there was a way to give negative 5 stars I would. The special effects were cool, but that's about it. The characters are unbelievable, and the acting is subpar at best. The plot is so full of holes and tropes that it might as well have been written by a small child. It massacres the ancient Greek stories that it is "loosely" based on and provides no depth. The entirety of the romantic storyline rests on one of the most overused and tired tropes known to man - the secret prince falls in love with the fake princess (another plot hole - Ariadne can't be a real princess if she is the daughter of a commoner, Minos, who usurped the throne). The whole thing makes a mockery of ancient Greek culture, badly confusing it and distorting it with Egyptian themes (the whole royals are servants or children or even avatars of the gods theme is an Egyptian thing, not Greek). I watched this several years ago when I was younger and watching it over again reminded me why I stopped watching it in the first place - it was a horrendously done piece of media.

I was very excited to find a show about the lost continent of Atlantis legends and yet this is not about that. I feel there must have a big OOPS moment when someone on this production team realized that this is actually about Athens Greece instead of the mythical lost continent. The characters even refer this setting as Greece. OOPS.
I would like to comment on the production itself. I thought this must have been made in the late 1980s as the story was strident, the acting is way too "Kirkish" dramatic and the special effects are cheap at best. I couldn't believe this was made in the 21st century. If you are looking for a self absorbed amateur, non-creative, watered down remake of those 1960s Greek mythos movies you will love this.

The entertainment value of the premise here – the protagonist's initial time displacement, and eventual return back in time to Atlantis is rather good, but its implementation, i.e. the actual show is rather awful: the writing is awful, the sets and special effects are awful, the actors are lacking even a glimmer of charisma or ensemble chemistry, and the whole thing ends up rather unimaginative and uninspired, - flawed in a worst manner because it is so boring! The plot tries to go through the customary ‘motions’, but without providing for any internal logical reasons or motives. Those plot gyrations from episode to episode are rather tedious and meaningless, thus they feel empty and unnecessary: one can watch the first episode of the season #1 and the last episode of the season #2, and not miss anything by cutting out all that gaaarhrhrhbaage in the middle… Naturally, with such awful two seasons, they managed to not even start on the actual story of Jason and the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece – I guess it was planned for the season #3, which was unceremoniously cancelled, as this show is so undeserving.
However, if anyone reading this is connected to a film industry – well, the conceptual premise has a tremendous promise that was not fulfilled by this drivel of a show. However, if done right from a scratch, such a show can become BIG, BIGGLY BIG! It just needs some properly good writing, good ensemble actors who actually ‘click’ with each other so that their acting is not wooden but believable. It would also need some more inspired designs, good camera work – you know, all the usual ingredients of a successful show…
Cheers!

I've only watched Season 1, and I see from other reviews that Season 2 never resolves, so I don't know if I'll watch it.

I thought that by and large it was a pretty good show. The characters are likable and the actors put in good performances. The stories are actually pretty good, seemingly built around the rough outlines of stories from Greek mythology, but in reality it's mostly name-checking.

And it's the name-checking that I suppose bothers me the most about this. It's like they don't trust their own show to be able to stand on its own, so they paste the Atlantis name on something that in no way resembles what we know Atlantis to mean. The accounts of Atlantis are vague enough that the show runners had huge leeway in what they could have done with it. But there are limits. For one thing, it's supposed to have water everywhere, and it's supposed to be technologically advanced (at least by Ancient Greek standards). But here we're dry as a bone, and nothing remotely tech-ish at all. This Atlantis is just some random Greek city. And Atlantis is very much not Greek, even though Plato is our chief source of information on it. It supposedly existed many thousands of years before the Classical Greek era, and far away, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. I originally figured that it was kind of a joke, where they were suggesting that the Greek legends were somehow mangled memories of these other stories. But as it goes along it's pretty clearly set in ordinary Ancient Greece, with a little Rome thrown in for further anachronism.

Along similar lines, one of the main characters is the very Greek historical person Pythagoras, and it's made very clear that this is the "real" Pythagoras, with ongoing jokes about triangles. Except that he isn't Pythagoras. He never does anything remotely mathematical or philosophical. They just say he is so as to generate interest that isn't really there. They might as well have made him Leonardo da Vinci or Groucho Marx.

Is this an overly pedantic criticism? I get it that shows like this always drift far astray of their source material. But this is more like false advertising. Akin to labeling something a vampire movie when it turns out to be a screwball comedy.