An ungainly prequel buckling under the weight of exposition, but still intriguing enough to keep me wanting more.

Dune: Prophecy,' which follows the establishment of the Bene Gesserit years before the events of the movies, releases weekly on Max.

Prophecy.Set 10,000 years before the birth of Paul Atreides and his rise as the prophesied messiah known as Lisan-al-Gaib, HBO's new Dune: Prophecy series chronicles the early evolution of the Bene Gesserit order from a fledgling school for gifted young women to the superpowered mystical sisterhood that's pulling the strings of the imperial government at the start of Dune.