Childhood's End

The miniseries is certainly watchable, and the experiment represents a valiant effort. But in TV terms, Childhood’s End ultimately feels trapped between worlds--a program that’s alternately oversimplified and perhaps a bit too evolved for its own good.

There’s a certain loss of dramatic tension that comes with any direct translation of twists from an original work, but it’s heightened here--especially because the adaptation is a victim of the source material’s success.

At times the production can seem underbudgeted, the direction overwrought. Here and there, the dialogue sounds as if it had been written by an alien who picked up English from broadcasts of B-pictures. As the series' resident alien, Charles Dance--both as a disembodied and later an elaborately embodied, commanding voice--gets the best of this business.

The miniseries’ balance between individual narratives and humanity’s collective destiny remains a bit wobbly throughout.

The opening night of this three-part miniseries sets up a standard genre premise: Aliens contact Earth.... These productions [The Expanse and Childhood’s End] suggest there’s now more to Syfy than Sharknado sequels, so that’s encouraging.

Childhood's End is more thought-provoking than many Syfy miniseries of the recent past even as it stumbles through plot holes.

When it's up and running at full power, Childhood's End is as intriguing, provocative and unnerving as any visit to the "fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man." And there are many such stretches in these six hours. Yet there also are slow, padded, uninvolving stretches when the direction and dialogue wander off course. Ragged in structure and pacing, the miniseries is a slick-looking vehicle that occasionally stalls and sputters toward an uncertain future.