I should start out by saying I've never watched the movie. Or that is to say, I have watched 15 minutes of the movie and felt my soul eroding at an ever increasing rate so turned it off before permanent damage was done. I have however seen a few episodes of the TV show (Played at the dead hour of 12pm on a Sunday where I live).
From what I've seen of the series, it has potential but is clearly classified as "Spin Off" material. Now some people (specifically the marketing team at LucasArts) have emphasized the changes they've already made in trying to separate the show from the movies, however a lot more could have been done to make it a property in its own right.
What I'm talking about is getting rid of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and to a certain extent the other really well known characters (Count Dooku, Mace Windu, Amidala and Palpatine). We know how that ends. The only character who progresses in any way is Anakin and we've been shown the evil in Anakin since episode 1. From 2 to 3 there hasn't exactly been too much change for our little minds to handle, specifically change that requires an additional series to understand.
Put frankly, Anakin is little more than a 2D character (no pun intended), cursed by his inevitable downfall since we first meet him. A lot of extra material has been done between Episodes 4, 5 and 6, but in all of those the future was still in flux. Luke Skywalker honestly started as an earnest farmboy and ended up facing major moral questions. Anakin stared as a pretentious kid who had a lot of power and anger - and ends up a pretentious adult with a lot of power and anger (and a blade to let both out). Obi-Wan has almost no character development between the movies and the same can be said of 90% of the cast.
SO! Back to The Clone Wars - Rather than give us familiar characters then make them out of wood, give them different voice actors and put them as the "core" around which other characters can reveal themselves, why not put them in the far distance - heroes of the republic who seemingly can't fail and have more sway in the Jedi council than in reality they should. Why not make our core characters Jedi who diligently follow orders but are a little skeptical of the whole thing? Maybe they're stranded away from Republic support or end up having to fight their own dark side? How about a Jedi and admiral who fall in love but are faced with the problem when the admiral has to choose who to send into battle and in particular some suicide mission?
The series has done a decent job of getting subsidiary characters up and established who have most likely done one or all of what I mentioned above (that's the potential I mentioned above). In the end though, we always come back to Anakin or Obi-Wan who form the core of the over-arching narrative. Hardly any of these characters are important for more than 1-2 short scenes each episode. We know how the war ends. We know how Anakin, Padame and Obi-Wan end. Most of us are over it.
I'll leave it with a simple comparison - Band of Brothers. A TV series. Set during a war. We know the outcome of the war and it has been done to death in other series / mediums. Yet still they make one of the most compelling shows I've ever seen because they make us care about who lives and who dies, what friendships are made, who proves themselves in battle and who ends up running away just when they shouldn't - not the big-ass war going on to which we already know the outcome.
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