Dune: Prophecy, HBO’s prequel series to the blockbuster films of the same name, opens with a quasi-cryptic epigraph about war set against an abstract, smoky monochrome backdrop — an implicit promise to the viewer that it will deliver more of the awesome, austere sturm-and-drang that made those films the most artistically successful fantasy adaptations since Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It then immediately breaks that promise, burying the viewer, as did Dune adaptations past, until Denis Villeneuve’s films, under mountains of impenetrable voiceover exposition and overlit, 1990s-cable-TV-original cinematography. Gone is Frank Herbert’s original material. In its place is that of his son, Brian Herbert, author of an endless series of dull expository novels upon which Dune: Prophecy is loosely based. Gone is the writing of Villeneuve and his collaborators, who transformed a text thought largely unfilmable into smash hit films worthy of its enduring appeal, replaced by a rotating cast of network procedural veterans. “And gone, most painfully, is cinematographer Greig Fraser, whose moody, intense palette brought Frank Herbert’s world to overpowering life, replaced by a guy whose recent feature credits include films called Cyberbully and Undercover Grandpa.”