The Watchmen movie and the HBO show are not great stuff but there are elements of interest and fun there. The movie's opening sequence is genuinely cool, and far better than the rest of the movie. The HBO show likewise has an interesting opening sequence and a few decent ideas but it's undone by the fatal miscasting of Jeremy Irons and misreading of Laurie's story.
As for Moore's Watchmen, well it can be an acquired taste for some. And it's reputation can be a turn off. So I get that. For me the thing that struck me on reading it several times (and I still dip in to re-read bits from it on occasion like any comic) is how different it was from the reputation. Everyone says it's a dark comic but its colors are actually quite garish and bright...it has greens, oranges, purples all over the place (the movie and TV show failed to grok this, the nearest equivalent of the Watchmen color palette is in fact the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie). And when I say that it's made of the stuff of regular superhero comics I mean it, because while it's famous for realism and avoiding stylization in its fight scenes, it's also got moments where stuff like a dude hiding in a freezer, or someone stopping a bullet is played completely straight. Watchmen is made by people who know superhero stories and know how it works straight but who in this instance decide to subvert and make unfamiliar all that people take for granted about the genre.
It's a fairly deceptive comic. Like Rorschach is written so well that you can read it as a straight narrative of a vigilante with a tragic worldview or a total parody where Moore is basically laughing at him right the way through (except for the very last scene where he takes off the mask and becomes a human being again). There's so many different motivations and readings you can apply to those characters and the story still works...that doesn't quite happen often in superhero ongoings.