“Away” Netflix Series Review by Brooke Daugherty : Pop Culture Leftovers

“Away” Netflix Series Review by Brooke Daugherty

September 13, 2020 10:51 am |

*An American astronaut struggles with leaving her husband and daughter behind to embark on a dangerous mission with an international space crew.*

Netflix announced their space drama Away in 2018. It is based on an article by Chris Jones at Esquire about astronaut Scott Kelly. It seems the only consultation creator Andrew Hinderaker did was to the article itself and other space movies. The premise sounds interesting and the cast seems pretty solid. You have Oscar winner Hillary Swank as Emma Green, Josh Charles as her husband Matt Logan, and Vivian Wu as Chinese astronaut, Lu. The rest of the main cast, I hadn’t seen before, but all performed well.

I wish I could say the script performed well. It was written more as if Emma was deployed to war on Earth instead of millions of miles away. She wanted to turn back FROM THE MOON. There was conflict between Emma and Lu as well as between Emma and Cosmonaut Misha played by Mark Ivanir. The crew couldn’t get along. Generally, astronauts train for two years to do a short spacewalk. Here, apparently they only trained two years to be together for three, but no one got replaced with a back up when their obvious tensions arose? Beyond the personality conflicts, every episode had a catastrophic event or deadly illness, leaving no breathing room to actually feel anything for the characters.

Anytime two people were discussing a character, that person would show up right in the middle of the conversation. Every episode had a minimum of two flashbacks. It is rated TV-14 for sex, fear, and language. None of which are very apparent. Emma calls Matt “Shithead” affectionately, but it comes across as forced. With all the talk of affairs and relationships, you would think there was Game of Thrones level sex, but it is one network TV scene. The actual science and facts in this series aren’t even checked. It is listed as “Sci-Fi” probably because they have some tech we don’t currently have, otherwise, it is barely either one.

There are some things I liked about this series. The CGI is better than some theater movies I’ve seen. The acting was well done, even if they had little to work with. Ato Essandoh as Kwesi, Ray Panthaki as Ram, and Talitha Bateman as Alexis Logan all showed promise. This series had great diversity. The astronauts were American, Russian, Indian, British-Ghannan, and Chinese. We had a character in a wheelchair who was just a character. Even one of the children had Down Syndrome. There were different races and sexual orientations. Most of these things weren’t dwelled upon, making the characters people first, but I chalk that up to an accident as the writing doesn’t seem that aware.

I wish this was Hallmark Channel hokey, but it wasn’t cheesy enough. This series would have been better as a movie about just the crew. The back and forth between Earth and the astronauts along the flashbacks made for a frenetic storyline. If you are a suburban WASP soccer mom and her accountant husband named Chad, you might love this series. For someone who studied up on NASA as a child and recognizes teen dialog written by someone who probably hasn’t talked to a teenager.

If you want an adult sci-fi drama, skip it, but If you want something to watch with your elderly mother that she can keep up & won’t embarrass you too much, Away is it.

PCL Rating: Low Taste it

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: ROTTEN