Constellation Season One (2024) Developed By: Peter Harness Starring: Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, James D'Arcy, Rosie Coleman, Davina Coleman, William Catlett, Julian Looman, Barbara Sukowa, Henry David, Sandra Teles, Carole Weyers
I've never been particularly good at reviewing films and TV shows but I can at least usually explain the backstory concisely enough without giving away spoilers. Then a show like this comes along where even attempting to outline the basic premise is likely to result in a spoiler (or several)! It's a show that was recommended to me and one I was immediately interested in because... sci-fi. At first it seemed like it might be a reasonably normal such thriller, too. It stars Noomi Rapace, who I have previously not seen in anything, as Johanna Ericsson, a Swedish ESA astronaut aboard the International Space Station. She has a husband and daughter at home with whom she is chatting when... SUDDENLY!!... Shaking, alarms, loss of power... something has collided with the ISS and it has caused havoc!
With one crew member dead, Jo performs a spacewalk to assess the damage and declares an evacuation is their only option. Even that is not without problems, for the only means of doing that is via the ISS's Soyuz capsules. The problem there is that they only accommodate three crew members and only one of them is functional. The number of crew on the station? You guessed it - four (plus corpse). So poor old Jo has to stay behind on a crippled (and spooky) station and fix the other clanky old Russian capsule if she can, then pilot it home without any assistance.
Jo tries to coax the Soyuz capsule into life...
As I'm sure you would've guessed, Jo is able to get back to terra firma eventually, but not before spooky stuff starts happening on the cold station. It can't be her lonely mind playing tricks on her either, as once she's back on earth, some things don't seem right there either. Her young daughter Alice (played by identical twins, Rosie and Davina Coleman) spoke Swedish when she left but now doesn't, for example, and there are several other small differences too. One larger difference she finds upon her debrief, however, is that not only does no one believe her explanation of the cause of the accident - that it was the corpse of a Soviet cosmonaut that slammed into the ISS - but it is actually proven to be impossible when Roscosmos bigwig Irena Lysenko (Sukowa) confirms that no Soviet cosmonauts were ever lost in space missions, leading to questions about Jo's mental competence.
Meanwhile, former NASA astronaut Henry Caldera (Banks) is obsessed with the CAL (Cold Atomic Laboratory - something the real ISS has too), a spooky device with which current NASA astronaut Paul Lancaster (Catlett) was running an experiment on the ISS at the time of the accident on Henry's behalf. Paul is the crew member who was killed in the accident and Henry is desperate that Jo brings the CALs data core home with her before she departs, despite her having never even heard of it.
Henry Caldera has a staredown with... Henry Caldera?
Spooky things continue to happen in the form of apparent visions as well as small changes in the people and things she left behind, but Jo refuses to believe she's gone loopy from space sickness and instead tries to investigate what happened to her. This will, in all likelihood, be as confusing for you as it is for her, even once you figure out what the frickin' frack is going on (which took me two or three episodes as I recall) since the narrative keeps flip-flopping around and the story is not presented in a strictly linear fashion either. Suffice to say, it can be a bit confusing at times, and it's not a show that was written in such a way as to handhold the viewer through it. You're expected to pick up on visual clues or hints in the dialogue and work things out for yourself. Or as much as they can be worked out, anyway.
This might prompt you to look up episode guides online to see what, if anything, you missed (only after watching the episode in question, though), which can help as you head into the next episode, but many sci-fi fans will want to figure things out themselves. Whether this sounds appealing or not should tell you if you'll enjoy the show or not, even without knowing the major plot theme I'm trying not to spoil.
Jo explains what happened to her sceptical superiors...
In any case, it's a show worth the effort if you ask me. The story is even quite simple once you work it out. It's a theme that has been touched upon in numerous other sci-fi films and shows before but never quite like this as far as I've seen. For me, there are a few things that help it stand out. First is the high standard of acting throughout, and Rapace leads the way with her Jo whose confusion, frustration and fear is perfectly realised in a captivating performance. I can certainly now see why Rapace is so highly regarded. The two young Coleman sisters are also excellent as Jo's daughter Alice who is the first one besides Jo herself to realise that something is amiss, and I enjoyed Jonathan Banks too, who has perhaps the most complex role of anyone here, but everyone puts in a good shift.
Something else the show does well is the creepy atmosphere that is prevalent, pretty much throughout. Whether it's a nighttime drive through a snowy landscape, spooky visions of dead people, or of course, cold, dark, deserted space stations, you will probably have the same uneasy feeling regardless, at least partly because you can never know what might happen next! You might not always immediately get what's going on, but you'll never be in any doubt that it's a bit creepy, whatever it is.
Has Alice spotted something spooky too?
You may work out what's going on quicker than Jo does (even I did and I'm a bit of a dum-dum), and that definitely helps explain things and to follow what's going on better, but it's not really that clear where the story is going, nor how it's going to end. Sadly, this set of eight episodes is all we'll get too, as the show was cancelled due, I believe, to low viewing figures. Is it worth watching anyway? Well, it does lag a bit for a couple of episodes in the middle, and I lost interest for a while if I'm honest, but the beginning was excellent and I was glad I came back to it as the ending is good too. It's a show that doesn't provide many answers to our questions, and the very last shot of the finale poses another one, but considering the floopiness of everything that preceded it, I would say things are tied up fairly well. Even so, if you're one of those viewers who likes all loose ends tied up neatly, I would probably advise giving Constellation a miss, but for other sci-fi fans, particularly ones who like being left with something to think about, I'd say it's worth your time.
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