TV Shows #25

Away (2020)
Developed By: Andrew Hinderaker
Starring: Hilary Swank, Josh Charles, Vivian Wu, Mark Ivanir, Ato Essandoh, Ray Panthaki, Talitha Bateman

Certificate: 12 Running Time: 44-57 Minutes per Episode, 10 Episodes

Tagline: "Home Can Never Leave You"

My previously-glowing opinions about Netflix have slowly been changing over the last year or two but back in 2020, the news that they were working on a brand new, original sci-fi series made me giddy and excited and I had to sit down and think about fungus and other things of an oozy nature in order to calm down. I was going to start by saying it's set in the near future but do they ever actually state that in the show? I can't remember now, but I assume it must be as it's about the first manned mission to Mars. The crew due to make this historic flight is, naturally, one of a multi-national nature but I'm sure it won't come as a shock to find the mission commander is an American; namely, NASA astronaut Commander Emma Green played by the excellent Hilary Swank, which is great since she is an actress I haven't seen in anything for a while.

Falling under her (though not literally, as far as I'm aware) are Group Captain Ram Arya (Panthaki), an Indian medical officer and the crew's second-in-command, Lu Wang (Wu), a Chinese chemist, Misha Popov (Ivanir), a Russian engineer, and Kwesi Weisberg-Abban (Essandoh), a Jewish British-Ghanaian botanist who is the rookie of the crew. I did find myself wondering whether they would really send a rookie on a mission like this, but aside from that they seem like a sensible enough crew.

Away is definitely not a nail-biting spacey action/adventure though. It's more a drama set around the aforementioned mission, with the main focus on the sacrifices the crew have made in pursuit of their dream, whether being astronauts generally or taking on the mission at hand specifically. To that end, there are a few flashbacks detailing each of their dramas and work-related woes, including Lu Wang's forbidden love affair and Misha's resentful daughter. We also spend quite a bit of time with Emma's husband Matt (Charles) and teenage daughter Lex (Bateman), though part of the reason for this is that Matt works at NASA's Mission Control. How much you will enjoy these scenes, I don't know. Some of the little subplots work really well for the characters involved and are not dwelt on for too long, but the stuff with Matt and Lex takes up considerably more time and does grate a bit, for me anyway.

I think part of it for me is that I just didn't really like Josh Charles in his role. The only other thing I've seen him in is The Good Wife which suited him well. Here, I'm not so sure. Then again, having to put up with a moody teenager single-handedly would test anyone's patience, and Lex of course decides it would be a good time to start being 'rebellious' and all that nonsense. Any sci-fi geek like me will prefer the stuff on the Atlas itself anyway, obviously, and that is... not amazing, but better.

The sleek ship is powered by three large solar panels that extend from it's hull and it is also has two sections that spin around it as it flies. This is to generate artificial gravity for the crew quarters, though not the command areas which are in the main part of the ship. Its mission proper departs from a staging base on the Moon, as it probably would for real, and almost immediately some of the crew do little to hide their lack of faith in Emma's ability to lead what will ultimately be a three year mission. Can you guess which members of the crew have a problem with her? Yes, that's right, it's the pesky Russian and Chinese representatives! She certainly faces her fair share of challenges as commander too, as the mission unsurprisingly suffers numerous crises, both technical and medical.

Can Emma prove her doubters wrong? And can she command the mission all the way to the red planet? That's what, I believe, this first season was meant to tell us. It starts at mission launch and the final episode of the ten is meant to be when they land on the dustball. Whether they make it or not, I shall of course not reveal here, but the journey, successful or otherwise, has been rendered somewhat meaningless by Netflix's annoying decision to cancel the show.

In their defence, I don't believe the show was received tremendously well, and I can kind of see why too. I mean, I'm not exactly sure why, but I did find some episodes in the first half of the season a bit of a chore to get through. There are no technical issues - the sets, special effects and all that stuff are fine, and the cast all do a decent enough job too, particularly Ms. Swank as you might expect. I think it's more the script and the pacing that let it down a bit. It's starts slowly and often feels more like a mundane family drama with some spacey stuff than what it should feel like - a fascinating journey into the unknown. It's not like we'll ever see this scenario for real either. At the rate we're going, it will be hundreds of years before humans ever set foot on another celestial body, assuming we haven't killed ourselves off by then.

It's a real shame too. The show's premise is great and it gets better and better as the episodes wear on. I was really enjoying it by the end, having seen the crew bonding, overcoming problem after problem, and as much as the earth-based drama might drag, you do end up caring about the crew too. And let's not forget - getting to Mars is just the start - if/when the crew of the Atlas arrive there, they would still need to set up base, explore the planet, do science, etc. I guess you could say The Martian already did at least some of that excellently but I would still loved to have seen how they got on, what challenges they faced, and how they overcame them.

If the show had been renewed, I would probably have recommended watching this first season anyway, but is it worth watching by itself? I would probably say no. It has its moments including a few great ones, and there was definitely potential here, but it was all for nothing in the end. As may be the case for real. One day...

RKS Score: 5/10