That said, it's not a bad show if you watch it not having read the books. There are some decent original ideas, I liked the idea of the genetic dynasty. But, it's not Asimov's foundation, it's so different that it can hardly be said to be inspired by it. So, I wouldn't be complaining about it if it had a different name. Taking a series of well beloved books and deciding to so loosely adapt them that the end results has almost no relationship to the books feels disrespectful to me though.
The book has an interesting philosophical idea (psychohistory), but just doesn't work as a story. It feels too much like a disjointed sequence of deus ex machinas. (To be fair, I've read some other stuff from Asimov's Foundation series that did work as a story.)
The TV series tells a pretty compelling story and mostly does so quite well. Of course, by far the best aspect (the genetic dynasty) isn't even part of the book at all. So yeah, it's not a faithful adaptation, but it is a better story. The only thing I'm doubtful of is whether they can keep it up. Spanning millenia in this format feels sort of impossible (except perhaps as an anthology series). How often is somebody just going to cryo-sleep for centuries and ending up in just the right place without it getting the same feeling of contrived deus ex machina as in the original book?
