• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Jun 05, 2015 By Alee Karim Web Exclusive

If Cloud Atlas, Lost, and The Wire shared a pot cookie then indulged in a threesome, the resulting offspring would most closely resemble Sense8. The brainchild of J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and The Wachowskis (The Matrix), Sense8 follows the lives of eight people across the world who are mentally linked such that they can share perceptions and, eventually, skill sets. These men and women include druggy DJ Riley (Tuppence Middleton), prodigy safecracker Wolfgang (Max Riemelt), and hacktivist Nomi (Jamie Clayton).

On its surface, Sense8 feels like a revisiting and unpacking of the ideas The Wachowskis explored in their adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Unlike Cloud Atlas, Sense8‘s ensemble is contemporaneous, creating an exciting real time tension as the characters take advantage of their seven partners’ unique specialties and experiences to unravel mysteries in their own respective scenarios. Enabling all this is a semi-visible guide (and suspected terrorist) played by Naveen Andrews. His presence as a mystical enabler straight out of the show that put him on the map (Lost) will likely remind you of that show’s stronger moments. And fans of Lost‘s loopy-yet-satisfying middle third will find a lot to enjoy here.

A pilot for a show this elaborate is a necessarily flawed endeavor and Sense8 does not have a full head of steam right out of the gates. Its first half hour is a fairly unwieldy dirigible of establishing scenes that may shake your faith in this thing getting off the ground. But rest assured, it does. And by the last 10 minutes of the pilot it truly hums and doesn’t let up from through the three episodes released for preview. At its core, Sense8 is also sincerely progressive, well populated by persons of color, queer men and women, and a trans woman in a leading role. Some may find it heavy-handed that these characters’ non-hegemonic characteristics often become plot points (as opposed to Orphan Black, another stylistic cousin whose queer and PoC players are never announced as such). But taking a microscope to diversity is a key Wachowskian theme. Finding true love, coming out as yourself, and listening to the voices in your head-they’ve never told a story without these elements and it will be intriguing to finally see them unfold in slow motion on their first foray into episodic television.

There are downsides of course, but they’re mostly in the details: the music is frankly bland, often leaning on typical television tension techno (or TTTT). The credit typography is a cheesy “quirky typewriter” font and the title crawl unfolds like a video portfolio of a National Geographic photog, a fairly on-the-nose declaration that we’re all the same, really. It’s hard to fault a project like this for the latter, however, when the move is ultimately sincere. Yet one wonders why such cheap gilds rest upon this otherwise lovingly designed house, especially in 2015 when the bar for TV is so unbelievably high. Let’s presume these decisions were lowest priority on our creators’ slates, in the hopes that their story speaks for itself as it has quite a bit to say (and loudly, through several voices at once). And if you’re still reading this, you’ll be enthralled with what you hear. (www.netflix.com)

Author rating: 8.5/10