TL-DR; Foundation is good. Foundation is really good. First episode only obviously.
Hand up, I don’t remember the plot details of the Foundation Trilogy, but what I do remember is the way it manages to capture both the individual and the epic scale. The TV show manages this… effortlessly. The focus of the first episode rests with Gaal, a woman naive to the span and grandeur of the galactic empire and her.. awaking to it is the device used to draw the viewer in. Through her we are introduced to the world and story and it’s a great way to personalise the first preshocks of the coming catastrophe. Lou Llobell gives Gaal an aura of intelligence, but also of innocence and vulnerability. She is undoubtedly the star of the show, more so that any of the more major players , although they are uniformly good, especially ‘Day’, the central active member of the trinity of clone emperors. There are also couple of very interesting cameos.
And it looks amazing. There were probably.. five shots in the first 10 minutes where I thought ’God, I’d capture that and use it as a desktop’. The costumes, set design and CGI backdrops are absolutely top notch. The SFX are impressive - the Avengers this is not, but when it wants to do spectacle it does it in spades. In terms of visuals, it is pleasingly not Star Trek’s gleaming plastics or Star Wars’ grimy freighters and dust bowls. It has a very brutalist feel, all hard angles and concrete, but with it a sense of engineering rigour and permanence which underlines the plot - living in this world you could believe it would go on forever and so you could believe the panic that would ensue if a Harry Seldon came along and said they could prove it would all fall to ruin. It has the feel of a Roman Empire as much as anything. Again, completely in keeping with the overarching story.
Is it the Foundation of the books? As I say, I don’t honestly remember enough to pin that down. But it feels very close to the spirit of the books as I remember them, and the level of craft and artistic vision is evident. As I say, It is not Star Trek. It is Not Star Wars. It is not ‘Game of Thrones in Space’. It is it’s own thing and it is doing it with confidence and poise.
If you can find a way to watch it, highly recommended.