Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude” — an elliptical epic of fate, family, politics and madness in Macondo, a fictional town that represents the wider, tragic history of Colombia and Latin America as a whole — has been made into a Netflix series.

That’s Netflix; the streaming service better known for “Squid Game,” “Tiger King” and the more overpriced works of Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes.

Bad idea, right? Well, to further quote that other prizeworthy wordsmith Olivia Rodrigo, “f—k it, it’s fine.”

More than fine, actually. The first season of this two-part, Spanish-language production can come across at times like a highbrow telenovela. But the sweeping pageant does an impressive job of streamlining García Márquez’s idiosyncratic, discursive novel into an expeditious but still thoughtful, contemplative and, yes, realistically magical eight hours.

The author’s sadness and humor come across intact; the...