WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Watchmen, which just completed its nine-episode first season on HBO.
You can fairly argue that HBO's Watchmen shouldn't exist. Original comics author Alan Moore doesn't approve of any adaptations of his creations, and it's easy enough to be sympathetic to his position. Despite that, however, Damon Lindelof's fresh story set within the Watchmen universe is absolutely the best possible television adaptation there could possibly be. After nine episodes, it both lives up to the high standards of the comic by Moore and Dave Gibbons, and is, with practically no competition, the best superhero TV series ever made.
Most superhero TV shows aren't necessarily aiming for high artistic greatness. Entertainment value? Absolutely. The occasional bit of topical/"political" commentary mixed in with the pulp? Sure. In general, however, they're essentially soap operas with sci-fi/fantasy trappings and colorful costumes (or, in the case of the Marvel Netflix dramas, dark, desaturated costumes). They have to be good enough to keep you waiting for the next episode or season, but by their ongoing nature, they're unlikely to provide the satisfaction of a complete story.
We do need to acknowledge the generally accepted high-water mark for superhero television: the DC Animated Universe shows. The 1992-2006 era, from Batman: The Animated Series through Justice League Unlimited, does contain many of the best half-hour episodes of superhero television ever, including "For the Man Who has Everything," the one Moore adaptation he at least sort of approved. It is, admittedly, apples to oranges, comparing the strength of the DCAU's family-friendly stories of classical heroism to Watchmen's adult deconstructionism.
Watchmen does have an inarguable advantage over the DCAU, the Arrowverse, the Marvel shows, and everything else is in terms of consistency. Even if we just compare a single season of any of those series to Watchmen to negate the unfairness of comparing a short run to a long one, you'd be hard pressed to pick out any season of any superhero show without a single weak episode. All nine episodes of Watchmen are, at minimum, extremely good. At least two of them ("This Extraordinary Being" and "A God Walks Into Abar") are flat-out masterpieces of storytelling, writing and directing that will rank among the best episodes of any drama for years to come.
In terms of sheer artistic ambition, the only superhero show that's even on the same playing field as Watchmen is Legion. Both are prestige series that push the limits of what the genre is ordinarily deemed capable of, and they're willing to leave audiences confused with their weird plotting and psychologically driven storytelling. They even both feature Jean Smart as part of the cast. Legion, however, could get a bit too carried away with its own weirdness to the point the confusion could detract from the enjoyment, especially in its second season, whereas Watchmen miraculously answers almost all of the huge story questions it kept raising.
Just as the original comic dealt with the important issues of its day, HBO's Watchmen has a lot on its mind. Lindelof and his writing team have much to say about everything from racism to law enforcement to nostalgia to familial trauma. Its attitude toward superheroes is similar to the comic, but it adds different nuances; both works see how wearing masks to dispense justice, either as a cop or as a vigilante, leads to problems, but the TV series looks more sympathetically at what drives its heroes to disguise themselves.
One area in which the show actually improves upon the source material is in the clarity of its messaging. Both the comic and the show are against extremism, with different villains across the political spectrum. However, plenty of real-world, right-wing extremists completely missed the point that Rorschach was written as a bad guy, and embraced him as one of their own. These same people certainly seem to understand the Rorschach-inspired Seventh Kavalry are supposed to be bad guys on the HBO series, given how vocally they've denounced the drama as "Wokemen."
Another thing the show does better than the comics? Making viewers understand how someone could actually fall in love with Doctor Manhattan (it can't just be about the blue penis, right?). Manhattan is a cold and distant character, who, as we know from the comics, could make a pretty lousy boyfriend because of that extreme detachment from humanity. But the show's jaw-dropping eighth episode, "A God Walks Into Abar," finds a way to demonstrate how Manhattan, in all his oddness, could be reassuring and endearing. When Regina King's Angela Abar tries to gain his power at the end of the finale, you understand her reason for doing so is that, freed from the bounds of time, she could always be with him.
For all this praise, it's not a perfect show. Translating certain conspiracy story beats written in the 1980s into the 2010s does result in some questionable moments, although it wouldn't be Watchmen if it wasn't at least somewhat uncomfortable for everyone. The episode "Little Fear of Lightning" is great as a character study of Looking Glass's trauma, but drawing so many parallels between the "alien squid" attack and 9/11 makes awkward readings unavoidable. While the show generally manages its mystery well, sometimes it ends up having to sacrifice dramatic clarity for the sake of plot construction. That's most notable with the character of Lady Trieu, who we can't really understand and connect with until the final episode, and whose ultimate reveal lacks the same heft as Ozymandias' "I did it 30 minutes ago" speech from the comic's ending.
Whether Watchmen will receive a second season, and whether it could possibly live up to the first, is an open question for now. As self-contained as this season is in regard to wrapping up this particular story, there are still plenty of openings for new stories to be told in this universe: what happened to Nite Owl, for instance, and, of course, the Ozymandias trial and potential impeachment of President Redford could be thematically rich. If the impeachment story is next, maybe we just want to wait a couple years, for the sake of perspective.
Developed by Damon Lindelof, HBO's Watchmen stars Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Jean Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Tom Mison, James Wolk, Adelaide Clemens, Andrew Howard, Frances Fisher, Jacob Ming-Trent, Sara Vickers, Dylan Schombing, Lily Rose Smith and Adelynn Spoon.