
EPISODE 1.1
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As the mission launches, Emma finds her mettle as commander
... More tested by an onboard accident, a divided crew and a family emergency back on Earth.LessTwo-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank leads this 10-episode space drama as an astronaut who makes the painful decision to part with her family for an extensive voyage across the stars.
As American astronaut Emma Green (Swank) prepares to lead an international crew on the first mission to Mars, she must reconcile her decision to leave behind her husband (Josh Charles) and teenage daughter (Talitha Bateman) when they need her the most. As the crew's journey into space intensifies, their personal dynamics and the effects of being away from their loved ones back on Earth become increasingly complex.
LessIt’s the smaller-scale issues that hit the balance between exoticism and relatability that the rest of the series has so much trouble locating. But as the season chugs along, the team-building takes the form of crew members giving each other nonstop inspirational speeches.
Full review“Away” isn’t illustrative of its top-flight cast and crew’s abilities. Perhaps it could find a better balance in Season 2, or perhaps this is the space show people want, even if it’s not what they deserve.
Full reviewI remain, as always, a sucker for anything even vaguely NASA-themed, but also for the kind of nuanced, hyperemotional family drama that Goldberg and Katims did on a show like Parenthood. Away only gets the space half of things right, but it often gets that half very right.
Full reviewEven if the script doesn’t always deliver, Away looks the part, and television really has come a long way, in terms of the scale of what we can see on the small screen.
Full reviewIt needs Will Bates’s strong, stirring score; it needs Joni Mitchell’s River, too, to give it a midway lift at Christmas, in a sappy-sweet montage with tinsel strewn across the living quarters. It’s a little less than binge-worthy on every level, but as space soap, it passes the time.
Full reviewThe sagas of the families left behind—largely, family life sociology with a touch of soap opera—are, at least, watchable and sometimes better than that.
Full reviewDespite strong acting, convincing production design and propulsive storytelling, the weepy stuff often feels contrived. Emma’s “woman trying to have it all, astronaut edition” plot verges on insulting.
Full reviewThe series has all the markers of a prestige consideration of what it means for humanity to take flight, but leans so heavily on inspirational tropes of the genre that it never, itself, soars.
Full reviewA self-important patchwork of space clichés and boilerplate family conflict that never manages to make it into orbit.
Full reviewEveryone’s well-intentioned, fundamentally decent, and capable. There are no villains, only complicated situations. When someone suggests it’s better for an astronaut to die in space a hero than return home a coward, the argument feels profound, not diabolical. This makes the series dramatically frustrating at times, but given our current social and political climate, it’s also refreshing.
Full reviewAway: Season 1 is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix.
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