Anthony Doerr’s Kirkus-starred and Pulitzer Prize–winning 2014 novel, All the Light We Cannot See, is a sweeping historical drama whose main action takes place in 1944 in Saint-Malo, France—a Nazi-occupied city that will soon be heavily bombed by Allied forces. It focuses on two very different people in it: Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a sightless French 16-year-old whose father, a locksmith at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, brought her there shortly after the Nazis invaded France; and Werner Pfennig, an 18-year-old German soldier who’s part of a squad dedicated to tracking down and killing people making illegal radio transmissions. Their lives intersect toward the end of the novel, but most of the book consists of flashbacks that cover the past 10 years of the characters’ eventful lives.

Doerr’s work is marked by lyrical prose; keen insights into the effects of war on soldiers and civilians; and subtle, nuanced characterization. However, a new four-episode miniseries adaptation, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and directed by Night at the Museum’s Shawn Levy, is not lyrical. Neither is it insightful, subtle, or nuanced. It premieres on Netflix on Nov. 2.

Some of the most striking passages in the book delve into Marie-Laure’s sensory experiences as a blind person; she lost her sight as a young girl, and her relationship with color is fascinating. When her uncle, Etienne, broadcasts secret codes to the Allies from a radio in his attic, it’s an activity that Marie-Laure experiences as something akin to a fireworks display: “That little attic bursting with magenta and aquamarine and gold for five minutes…” For the most part, though, “her world has turned gray. Gray faces and gray quiet and a gray nervous terror hanging over the queue at the bakery…”

None of this is in the miniseries, which addresses Marie-Laure’s experiences as a blind person only superficially—surprising, considering that actor Aria Mia Loberti is, in fact, legally blind. Instead, the miniseries is far more invested in making Marie-Laure a saintly, heroic figure whose positive attitude gives everyone a sense of hope. (Hugh Laurie, as Etienne, is practically goggle-eyed with admiration for her.) This choice is particularly unfortunate, because Doerr goes out of his way to counter this sort of thing in his book; when Werner tells Marie-Laure she’s brave, for instance, she says, “When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave.…But it is not bravery. I have no choice. I wake up and live my life.”

Werner, in the book, is also a more complex character. His talent for repairing radios impresses a powerful Nazi, who gives the orphan boy a chance to attend a prestigious German school that trains its students for war. Werner seizes the opportunity, even though it means being separated from his sister; after all, he doesn’t want to be sent to the mines like so many other boys, and he greatly admires the luxuries that powerful Nazis enjoy. However, his self-interest does have limits; he feels ashamed of his own cowardice when he doesn’t defend a friend who refuses to carry out a cruel order, and he feels guilt over his later actions as a soldier, which lead to numerous deaths. Still, Doerr’s narrative doesn’t simply forgive Werner for his actions, nor does it give him a free pass for simply having a conscience.

Such nuance is lost in the miniseries, which very much portrays Werner, played by Dark’s  Louis Hofmann, as an unwilling participant in Nazi atrocities—as if he’s just as much of a victim as those he helped kill. It even changes the book’s ending to allow for the possibility that Werner might just make it out the war OK. In an Entertainment Weekly interview, director Levy put it this way: “I wanted to end with a promise of hope, and there were some bleak, deeply upsetting scenes late in the book that we didn’t include in the show.” We certainly wouldn’t want a story about war to bleak or upsetting, after all.

In the book, there’s a villainous character named Reinhold von Rumpel—a Nazi sergeant major who’s on the hunt for a valuable diamond that Marie-Laure’s father smuggled out of Paris. He’s a threatening but chillingly banal figure whose primary trait is his cold and calculating nature. The miniseries’ version of von Rumpel, as played by Lars Eidinger, is absolutely unhinged from the start; early on, he guns down a café owner for not answering a question fast enough. It’s as if the filmmakers are saying to the audience, See, here’s what a really bad Nazi looks like.

The actors try their best, but there’s only so much they can do with such simplistic material. Their efforts aren’t helped by the fact that Hofmann and Loberti are both in their 20s and look it; certainly, no one would mistake them for naïve, fresh-faced youth. It’s especially glaring when Marie-Laure and her father, played by a subdued Mark Ruffalo, are fleeing Paris, and Loberti is forced to utter this line with a straight face: “No one’s going to give us a ride because kindness is dead, and all the people of the world have become evil at the same time.” “Not all the people,” responds her father. That’s about as thoughtful as this adaptation gets.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.