Away

Space is more of a backdrop for Away’s actual drama, which is about smart, ambitious people getting in each other’s way, and their own, and whether keeping your feet on the ground might not be the better decision.

Away works on several levels, at its best as a gripping and spectacularly produced cinematic space opera. [31 Aug - 13 Sep 2020, p.7]

An issue-free mission to Mars doesn’t make for compelling television. So in every episode there is a major and often life-threatening issue for the crew to deal with. This could try our patience as the seasons progress (much like June’s almost-escapes from Gilead have on The Handmaid’s Tale). But for the inaugural 10 episodes it works perfectly, particularly the taut middle episode that have the crew facing a daunting crisis.

One of the producers here is Jason Katims ("Friday Night Lights,” “Parenthod”) and the warm familial intimacy of his previous shows flows through “Away.” The cast is uniformly strong and there’s a reason Swank has two Oscars. “Away” isn’t great but it is unique, and that’s good enough.

Like the Atlas itself, “Away” is a beautiful machine that stalls and sputters from time to time but builds momentum as it reaches for the heavens.

Everyone’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.

The 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. They can’t, however, compare with the irresistible drama of life on the spaceship. ... These 10 hours spent hurtling toward Mars hold the promise of rich entertainment.

Comfortably formulaic.. ... “Away” may not boldly go where no show has gone before, but it reminds us that watching likable people doing their best provides its own simple pleasures.

I appreciated the way each episode gives us a different astronaut’s backstory, “Lost”-like, to add context to their behavior in space. And I liked thinking big thoughts about what it might be like to spend three years away from the planet, which the astronauts are facing, fighting off despair and loneliness.

Away lacks the budget for anything grander or the daring for anything deeper. Rather than awed spectacle, it majors in soul and melancholy, Big Musical Moments, formulaic bonding. It 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.

Even 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. When focused on the crew, the show seems smarter, and their stories are far less by the book, particularly when it comes to family dynamics.

I 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.

The new series is incredibly watchable, but flails when it comes to knowing what to focus on.

"Away" should be much better than it is, squandering a fascinating subject on pedestrian family drama.

“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.

The generic storylines and occasionally cringe-inducing dialogue feel like a particular waste given how capably the show captures the majesty of space. ... It’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.

Eventually somebody's going to make a really good TV series about a manned space mission, but Away isn't it. Like Hulu's "The First" and National Geographic's "Mars," this handsome Netflix drama about a crew traveling to Mars -- and those left behind -- wants to be stirring and mostly settles for dull, mostly proving that in space, no one can hear you snore.

Striking the appropriate sentimental balance is tricky. Sometimes Away gets it right, and sometimes it’s overly saturated in space schmaltz. ... It too frequently decides to play it safe.

“Away” tries to build the backstories of its characters through flashbacks but these tend to be as predictable as the outcome of the “dramatic turn” each episode takes.

It has that same massive heart that Katims utilized in “Parenthood” and “Friday Night Lights,” but it too often lacks the ensemble depth and stakes of those beloved dramas. Most of all, it suffers greatly from the dreaded Netflix bloat. So while there are stars that shine in this interstellar drama, too much of it feels grounded to the earth.

It’s too bad the series lays everything on so thick, resulting in a work of television that feels far too routine.

A self-important patchwork of space clichés and boilerplate family conflict that never manages to make it into orbit.

The 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. ... Which is not to say that the actors aren’t pushing back, inasmuch as they can.

Unfortunately, Away doesn’t deliver on its promise. The show’s formula reveals itself within the first couple of episodes, only to be endlessly repeated.

Despite 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. And episodes stuffed with life-or-death dilemmas, terrestrial flashbacks and workplace as well as familial discord on Earth result in underwritten characters whose bleak backstories stand in for personalities.