AppleTV’s Constellation has wrapped up its first season after eight mind-twisting episodes. Noomi Rapace (Prometheus) is an astronaut again, only she isn’t fighting robots or alien monsters this time. Returning to Earth after a stint on the International Space Station (ISS), she finds the Earth to which she returns strangely unfamiliar. Constellation should attract fans of Fringe, Counterpart, The X-Files, and Sliders.
Technically, the main premise of Constellation has been done to death, but the show demonstrates that far from getting old, the premise provides an infinite playground for sci-fi storytelling. It’s like the sci-fi premise of a character who can see a short distance into the future: you can never run out of storytelling potential and fascinating variations. Constellation takes the parallel-universe premise and throws in a large helping of the Heisenberg Principle and quantum entanglement.
Constellation starts out fairly straightforward, then dives into the bizarre, with jumpscares and terrifying mysteries, but by the third or fourth episodes, viewers should begin to grasp the basic mechanics of what’s going on, even if the details remain fuzzy. On a second watch-through, viewers will pick up on things they missed the first time around.
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Constellation suffers a bit from modern television’s pathological aversion to depicting masculine men and insistence upon casting women in roles to which they are not suited. While his character is not completely devoid of natural masculine instincts, James D’Arcy (Avengers: Endgame) plays a somewhat emasculated husband who stays home teaching kindergarten while his wife is up in space. While slightly more masculine, Julian Looman (The Mallorca Files) cannot help but tear up in one scene. Clare-Hope Ashitey (Children of Men) plays a no-nonsense FBI officer investigating a homicide.
Despite the wokeness, Constellation remains soulful, with empathetic characters, expertly entangled non-linear storytelling, and enough sci-fi twists and turns to satisfy any aficionado of the genre. A huge amount of story is crammed into the first season, despite its abbreviated runtime. Nothing about the series seems mean-spirited. Noomi Rapace put in an excellent performance as an intelligent woman trying to keep her family together despite the astronomical forces threatening to tear them apart.
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Constellation is chock-full of familiar faces and industry veterans, though many of them might be more familiar to European audiences. Jonathan Banks (the liver-spotted bald guy from Better Call Saul) plays a big role, partnered against the enigmatic Barbara Sukawa (12 Monkeys). Child actresses Rosie and Davina Coleman put in good performances, even if their characters are strangely mature for adolescents.
While Constellation season 1 works as a standalone story, with emotionally fulfilling payoffs and a conclusion, enough mysteries remain for the series to continue. Viewers will find themselves wondering just how dead anyone can really be in this fictional world, and if they should really find the resolution as satisfactory as they do. A second season has not yet been confirmed.
What did you think of Constellation? Does it compare favourably with Fringe and Counterpart? Let us know in the comments below!
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