First episode takes a lot of liberties with the book but overall it's pretty amazing to see it in live action
Agreed. First episode was good, but they definitely changed a number of things and skipped over quite a bit. I'll never understand why they change small details for film like a character's name (i.e. George in the book, but James in the series). I liked how they eluded to the book being better than the series when Sadie said, "Everybody knows the book is always better." That had to be intentional.
It's interesting to see how it plays out on screen as opposed to how it played out in my mind while reading it. Al is pretty much how I pictured him. I was a little skeptical when Franco was cast in the lead role (I had envisioned someone like Matthew McConaughey), but he's good so far. Looking forward to the next episode.