This is a non-spoiler review for all eight episodes of Night Sky: Season 1, which lands Friday, May 20 on Prime Video.
J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek are absolutely mesmerizing in an otherwise humdrum series about an elderly couple caught up in a mystic conspiracy involving an ancient space portal buried in their backyard. The elements that do work here revolve heavily around Simmons and Spacek’s characters and their personal journeys while the rest of it — involving vague lore, overarching world-building, and side characters — dully pads things out. Yes, it’s a rare sci-fi series where the “sci-fi” part is the least interesting contribution.
Obviously, in casting award-winning actors as the two leads, you’re going to get some damn fine performances. Simmons (slumping and aging himself a little bit, considering he’s buff Jim Gordon elsewhere) and Spacek feel genuine and lived-in as Franklin and Irene York, a longtime married couple living in the shadow of their son’s tragic death 20 years earlier. The best scenes in Season 1 involve these two, either interacting with each other or different characters, speaking genuinely about their relationship or their past hardships. Nothing about the Stargate they’ve visited hundreds of times since their son’s passing, or the mysterious visitor who, one night, comes through from the other side and changes their current life in profound ways, makes anything better. Nope, all the strongest stuff here is just normal life, pushing the sci-fi portal story far off to the side, far removed from our interests.
Without the conspiracy parts of the story, which involve refugees from a space cult being hunted by “Guardians,” Night Sky totally works as a much smaller Twilight Zone-type tale about a husband and wife in their golden years being both gifted and cursed with a miraculous invention that allows them to see a planet… a dead planet, one that’s beautiful but also a constant reminder of the unreachable. It’s the thorny rose of being able to see farther than anyone else, but to also see emptiness. The desolate planet they sit and stare at, from behind a protective barrier, is gorgeous and uplifting while at the same time being hugely depressing and frustrating.
So, all in all, not knowing what this place is, or where the portal came from, works better for the story. It allows the sci-fi parts to become a metaphor for different things, as the stunning rocky planet both illuminates the best of the Yorks’ life while also quietly sounding an alarm about their pain. Suffice to say, the series is firing at its brightest when it operates on this level. It starts this way and then, sparely, returns to it over the course of these eight episodes. The rest of it, especially time spent with Adam Bartley’s overbearing neighbor Byron or Beth Lacke’s resentful caregiver Chandra, feels tacked on and unnecessary, even given the story’s expansion pack involving a mother and daughter in Argentina — Julieta Zylberberg and Rocio Hernandez — who exist with secrets of their own, ones pertaining to the Yorks’ portal.
Closer to home, the Yorks’ granddaughter, Denise (Kiah McKirnan), and an enigmatic visitor from beyond, Jude (Chai Hansen), provide better opportunities for emotional arcs and personal stories — since Jude fills a surrogate son role that reinvigorates Irene — but, like most everything else in Night Sky, it all collapses when they touch the plodding adventure angle. At first, you might be frustrated that answers aren’t coming fast enough (and you still might feel that way by the end of the season itself), but then when the reveals do start arriving, there’s a banality to them and the only effect they have is in reminding you this story would’ve been better as a shorter feature.
Night Sky succeeds in crafting an old-age love story, which is hard to find on screen aside from ensemble TV dramas involving an entire family. And, in theory, that should be able to mix with light sci-fi. Overall, there’s still a focus on humanity and the bonds of love, especially with McKirnan’s Denise and the mother/daughter pair in South America, but the collision course aspect of the series, involving all the different characters eventually meeting and interacting, is rather underwhelming. Not to mention there are some characters who are a chore to watch and the ample time spent with them never pays off.
Simmons and Spacek remain as the two best ingredients here, to the point where anything not directly involving them suffers, and the stuff that does need them feels tiring when it’s not directly about them or their past. There’s a haunting examination of life here that gets buried as the series attempts to get lofty, and lengthy, with harder sci-fi mythos.