“Constellation,” premiering this week on Apple TV+, is a premier series about the bond between a mother and daughter set in a sci-fi setting, set in space, outside Cologne, Germany, and the snows of the North Pole.
Quantum mechanics has been heavily exploited in science fiction, both poetic and practical, but rarely as clearly as it is here. Particle superposition and entanglement, observer effects and liminal spaces are discussed and enacted metaphorically and otherwise. There are even live and dead cats. In fact, this is very much a story of life and death, or more appropriately, a story of life and death.
Noomi Rapace plays Joe Erickson, an astronaut who works on the International Space Station along with four other people. She is talking with her 11-year-old daughter back on Earth via tablet when something disastrously crashes into the station, killing one crew member (William Catlett, who plays Paul Lancaster). Sent on a spacewalk to survey the damage, Joe, circa the late 1960s, removes what appears to be the desiccated corpse of a woman wearing a Russian cosmonaut's suit, and finds bullet holes in her body. Jump out. Then, as the life support begins to shut down, her three of the remaining astronauts depart in the escape pod, which fills up and Joe takes her two to take her home. We work hard to repair the second pod. This is all extremely suspenseful, exciting, and convincingly handled, and it's worth marveling at how far we've come with both special effects and the television platform.
Back on Earth, Jo discovers that her husband Magnus (James Darcy) is hostile, the color of their car, and her daughter Alice (Davina and Rosie Coleman) doesn't speak Swedish. (This twin casting makes dramatic sense, as does the name Alice, an echo of Lewis Carroll's heroine.) And somehow, she knows how to play the piano. The viewer quickly senses that the problem is not with Joe, but with the world. Even though the world views Joe as uncooperative. Her memories are dismissed as hallucinations, symptoms of “high-altitude psychosis” or “astronaut burnout,” and without any real explanation, she is given both lithium and lithium, disguised as vitamins. (Other characters are drugged as well, including Russian Space Secretary Irene Lysenko, played by Barbara Sukova.)
The first two of the eight episodes are primarily set in space, depicting the accident, its aftermath, and Joe's return to Earth, where he will spend the remainder of the series. Many are made of glowing medicine cans that Nobel Prize-winning scientist and former astronaut Henry Caldera (Jonathan Banks) and another drug taker insist on bringing back to Earth. . We get a hint of what we're dealing with here when we suddenly switch from a land-locked business to a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, in a completely different caldera.
There are temporary dislocations, flashbacks and flashforwards, and sometimes what we call flashes to the side for just a moment, and it can be difficult to keep track of complex structures or remember exactly the reality we're facing. . one time. Still, the dramatic intent was always clear, even if it wasn't always obvious how or whether some of the pieces overlapped, and what wasn't obvious early on (mostly ) was later revealed. For all its sci-fi filigree, the series' driving force is emotional. Especially when it comes to the family drama that is completed by Joe and Alice, who don't really know each other, and Magnus, although not completely.
From the moment everything goes awry on the space station, the series stays tense. There are elements of horror in the direction and editing, and at least one shot felt like an homage to Stanley Kubrick, but there's also some psychological turmoil. Seeing things not as they should be, or familiar characters not seeming to be themselves, is certainly an old device, and certainly scary.
The characters struggle to find each other amid patterns of interference. When someone you care about turns their back on someone you care about, you never know who will be there or where they will be when they turn around. The story is told and the space scenes alone can take up an entire feature film, but the pacing is what many find slow. I call this a deliberate, slow, and wiser approach than bloating eight hours of television with unrelated plots and characters. Admittedly, there's a certain amount of repetition and circularity in the storytelling that I think some people find “Constellation” frustrating. “You have to go with the flow” But it’s all to the point.
Created by British playwright and screenwriter Peter Harness, whose work he has written for both Doctor Who and Wallander, felt appropriate. It is a French-British-American co-production, a hallmark of European television. , boasting visual clarity, lack of gloss, and an air of reality even when realism turns to magic. (French co-production company Haut et Court was also involved in the production of the great undead series “Les Revenants.'') The atmosphere, the moodiness, reminded me of the time-warping German series “The Dark.'' Let me do it. The theme is partially reminiscent of Counterpart, an otherworldly series set in Berlin, in which J.K. Simmons plays a dual role.
Delays in development suggest further developments to come. “Constellation” isn’t advertised as a limited series, but I would argue that it doesn’t need anything else. The series, or season, reaches a conclusion that feels true, even if it's not necessarily expected. You can see it as an homage to the current series. Not every show, even every great show, needs to come back.
How to watch: Wednesdays on Apple TV+
