After catching up few series, I was in the mood to try something new and my decision fell on to this series from Netflix which was quite short (only 2 seasons) and was completed few months ago. Since it was a science fiction type and being a Netflix original series, usually it had a very interesting out of the box kind of story. Without further ado, let's go on with the series.
Brief Story Line
The first season introduced us to 8 people throughout the world starting from a Chicago Police officer Will Gorski (Brian J. Smith - Stargate Universe TV series etc), a DJ from Iceland living in London named Riley "Blue" (Tuppence Middleton - Tormented, Jupiter Ascending etc), a Mexican actor Lito Rodriguez (Miguel Ángel Silvestre - Ferdinand etc), a bus driver in Kenya Capheus "Van Damn" (Aml Ameen - Harry's Law TV series etc), a businesswoman from Seoul named Sun Bak (Bae Doo-na - Symphaty for Mr. Vengeance, Cloud Atlas etc), an Indian pharmacist Kala (Tina Desai - The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel etc), a trans woman hacktivist Nomi (Jamie Clayton - Dirty Work TV series etc) and a locksmith/safe cracker from Berlin Wolfgang (Max Riemelt).
At first they seemed to be random people but apparently they all shared a connection which would later on be explained as something extraordinary. Will was the first to understand a bit better when a known terrorist Jonas Maliki (Naveen Andrews - Instinct TV series, The English Patient etc) approached him and explained that they were what people referred to as Sensates who were linked emotionally and thus each one of them could experience and even perform things that the other sensate could do. These 8 were part of a cluster "born" from the same mother Angelica (Daryl Hannah - Blade Runner, Wall Street etc).
Unfortunately though, this specialty made them a target of operation by an organization called BPO, with their main hunter called Whisper (Terence Mann - A Chorus Line, Critters etc). With the help from Nomi's girlfriend Amanita (Freema Agyeman - Doctor Who TV series, Law & Order: UK TV series etc) and several other people, these 8 had to learn how to deal with their specialty which changed their normal lives as well as trying to avoid the capture from BPO.
In second season, the story shifted from the more dramatic approach to a faster pace since the plot focused on the Sensates's decision of being proactive compared to their passive stance. And the role of Capheus also replaced by Toby Onwumere.
So how would the story unfold and how would it end? You could find them all through Netflix.
End of Brief Story Line
Well, this series was very unique. As I mentioned above, the first season focused more on the introduction of the characters. And because it was more of introduction, the story pace was moving around quite slow but the good thing was almost all the characters were so unique and special with their own sets of problems in life that I was quite hooked and intrigued by their stories. Of course having 8 lead characters made it become a bit of a challenge to give the balance screen time to those. And this kind of connection was something very new which made it a bit difficult to capture at first, but as the story goes, I was finally able to grasp better.
For me personally, all the cast were very interesting but obviously I also have my favorites such as Will as the police officer who had cases to solve and was also like their leader, Sun Bak who at first seemed like a soft person turned out to be a woman who could literally kick ass and Capheus who was such a positive person (although I prefer Aml Ameen than Toby Unwumere to play the role). The rest of the cast were also fun to see, especially Lito who was a very passionate person and I also liked Wolfgang who was the toughest guy but very loyal. Honestly though, I was a bit bored with Nomi's character but once she showed what she could do, she was amazing. My least favorite was Riley as I felt she did not offer any real meaningful role to the group although her background history could give us a bit of understanding. Now for Kala, at least her medical background really provided something extra but I did not really enjoy her personal life drama.
These 9 lead cast were very good in portraying their roles. And I loved how they really used the actual cities/countries as the shooting location. Watching this series would provide you a bit insight on the beautiful sceneries (I loved Iceland, London and Korea as well). The series also was very generous in using extras. I noticed they had really a lot people as backup like in the political rally scene in Kenya, or the parade in Sao Paolo etc. There was one thing that in the beginning felt confusing was the use of English by all the cast, despite living in various countries, but it would be explained in latter episode the reasons for this.
The story itself was very unique and the series was created by the Wachowskis (well known for The Matrix trilogy, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending etc) together with J. Michael Straczynski (famous for his creation of Babylon 5 TV series as well as wrote a lot of comics for both Marvel and DC). With those credits, no wonder they were able to create something so out of the box and high vision, with various current issues like political statement, humanity problem, LGBT and many others.
As a fan of science fiction series, this would be quite an interesting option. However, I personally preferred the story pace to be a bit faster in earlier episodes as I thought there were scenes which I thought were not really that necessary such as the love making scenes that were taking long time (not to mention might be disturbing for some people, so yeah this series was really for adults). And the duration of each episode of around 50+ minutes each also made the series felt overly long, especially in first season. But the last 2 episodes of season 1 was really awesome. I was extremely excited with episode 12 which I personally thought was one of the best season finale I have ever watched. It was the first time the Sensates had to work together with each contributing their personal abilities.
Season 2 I thought was much better in term of pace. There was no more introduction required and we could focus on the BPO storyline. And it was more action packed as well, and I thought the love making scenes were less frequent than first season. Oh, the interesting supporting characters were also given more screen time here, such as Detective Mun (Sukku Son), Bug (Michael X. Sommers), Rajan (Purab Kohli) and Puck (Kick Gurry). The second season finale was also awesome with an intriguing ending. But then somehow they decided to cancel the series leaving it with a cliffhanger. Luckily though because of the fans of the series, they somehow managed to convince the producer to make 1 final episode as the series finale, which was having a duration of 2.5 hours!
The series finale to me was good, not the greatest one, but it adequately covered most of the things left unresolved in season 2. Although there were minor things that did not seemed to have closure (such as Lito and Capheus), but almost all of them were either really closed by few scenes, or at least via conversation. I loved how they made almost everyone who had significant roles in 1st and 2nd season showed up in this finale. I also loved how the final fights were shown, but I dislike the final moment involving Will as I thought it resembled something from an 80s movie of 1 man army which was nice then but a bit illogical now. It was a bit of disappointment on that part as it made the climax became less satisfying. And the scenes before ending was also something that I thought was a bit unnecessary. But I guessed the writers wanted to show us 1 last "hurrah" for us. Oh during the end credit scene, they showed quite a lot of the people on set from those various countries, with fans all over the cities showing up with their love for the cast, which I thought was a nice gesture.
Overall, I enjoyed this series, especially with the last 2 episodes of 1st season and the second season. But the series finale, despite resolving most of the issues and giving a lot of actions as well, it did not have the best scenes to close it out to my personal opinion. If you are interested in watching this kind of science fiction series, with lots of drama surrounding the multiple main casts throughout several countries, then you certainly should give this a try. But if you prefer a more action packed during the whole series, then you might not have the best time watching it. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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