36 | New Scientist | 21 May 2022AM
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Night Sky
Holden Miller, Daniel C. Connolly
Amazon Prime Video, 20 MayGETTING older is never easy, but
ageing couple Franklin and Irene
York are able to take refuge from
their ailments and frustrations
by going out to “see the stars”.
Played by J. K. Simmons and
Sissy Spacek, the main characters
of Amazon Prime Video’s Night
Sky don’t just use a telescope to
gaze at the heavens. Instead,
they descend into a cellar hidden
under the floorboards of a shed
in their backyard, walk down a
dank tunnel and open a bizarre,
alien-looking door.
There, they find a chamber
that, somehow, transports them
to a room on what appears to
be another planet. They look
out the window at a view thatno one else on Earth gets to
experience. Or so they believe.
Night Sky, created by Holden
Miller and Daniel C. Connolly,
starts slowly, spending plenty of
time with Franklin and Irene as
they go about their daily business
in small-town Illinois, with the
sci-fi elements of the story often
fading into the background.
Simmons and Spacek are such
strong actors that Night Sky would
have been engrossing simply as a
story about a loving couple headed
into their twilight years, reckoning
with nostalgia and regret. The first
episode doesn’t deal with much
more than that, at least until
the end, when Irene discovers
a mysterious man inside the
underground portal.
The interloper, Jude (Chai
Hansen), both disturbs and
invigorates the Yorks, leading
them to new discoveries about
the device they have been using
for the past 20 years without
ever questioning it. He also
has an agenda of his own, which,
just like everything else in Night
Sky, unfolds slowly over theto the plot, and some of the show’s
detours look more like dead ends.
The Yorks’s nosy neighbour goes
through an entire unrelated
drama on his own just so he can
circle back to poking around the
shed and making an actual impact
on the plot. There are plenty
of scenes of similarly dubious
relevance involving secondary
characters that contribute to
the lethargic pacing.
Maybe there will be satisfying
answers in the remaining two
episodes of the eight-episode first
series, but, for now, Night Sky is
more about insinuations and
atmosphere than explanations.
There are references to “quantum
entanglement” and “spooky
action at a distance”, but nothing
definitive about the origins or
mechanics of the Yorks’s portal,
or the related projects of the
apparently globe-spanning
ancient order that Stella and
Toni belong to.
There is usually enough
enticement to keep watching
until the next episode, though,
and even when the show seems to
be spinning its wheels, Simmons
and Spacek find lovely grace notes
in their performances.
Night Sky’s most affecting and
engaging moments have nothing
to do with intergalactic travel
or transdimensional portals,
however. No special effect
matches Irene delivering a
heartbreaking monologue about
the death of the Yorks’s adult
son, or Franklin comforting his
granddaughter Denise (Kiah
McKirnan) at her father’s grave.
These characters are on their
way to learning the secrets of
the universe, but they have
already lived long enough to
know what truly matters. ❚Josh Bell is a film and TV critic
based in Las Vegas, Nevadacourse of the first six episodes.
The glacial plot progression
can be frustrating, especially
when the focus shifts away from
the Yorks to other storylines
whose connections to the main
narrative take a while to coalesce.
The second episode introduces
a mother and daughter living
in rural Argentina, protecting
a strange chapel and reluctantly
taking orders from a dangerous
secret society. The dynamicbetween Stella (Julieta Zylberberg)
and her teenage daughter Toni
(Rocío Hernández) isn’t as
emotionally rewarding as the
Yorks’s lived-in relationship, but
their direct involvement in the
vague conspiracy lends their
scenes a bit more excitement.
Still, the character development
is as incremental as that relatingOut of this world
A couple discover a portal to another planet in Night Sky, but the show’s most
affecting moments have nothing to do with intergalactic travel, finds Josh BellFranklin and Irene York
don’t need a telescope
to gaze at the stars“ For now, Night Sky
is more about
insinuations and
atmosphere than
explanations”Views Culture