Moonhaven

Moonhaven works as both a mystery and a sci-fi allegory; despite a sometimes slow pace, it steadily layers on clues to both the murder and the culture that produced it. ... But it’s also a quietly human series, whether racing toward the next beat of the mystery or taking a moment to appreciate the strange (sometimes corny) beauty of the world it’s created for itself.

It’s a very weird show, something AMC+ has started to become a home for, and yet it is so singular in its voice that the goofiness is like an unexpectedly warm blanket. I was baffled by every episode; I enjoyed every episode; I wanted a hundred more.

It’s refreshing that Moonhaven, for all its minor flaws, trusts viewers to make our own connections between the lunar colony, what little we get to see of 23rd-century Earth, and the various geopolitical cataclysms of today. Of course the conflicts it sets up around power and privilege are relevant. But the resolutions aren’t simple.

Despite the genre formalism and the heaviness of the ideas, “Moonhaven” never feels trapped under its own weight. It’s a surprisingly fun show with a tight, brisk narrative that lends each of the six episodes an electrifying cliffhanger.

“Moonhaven” occasionally feels like the cheap, basic-cable version of those ambitious, elegantly-rendered series [“The Expanse,” “For All Mankind,” and “Foundation.”] But its ideas are interesting enough to make it worth the watch—you’ll just have to get past some dreadfeel dialogue filled with shadow and cringe, and discover the Truelune within yourself.

The show’s six-episode first season clearly wants to be gripping and propulsive at times and it really isn’t, but there are frequent bursts of delightful and inventive strangeness.

It’s complicated. It’s also overstuffed with soap opera melodramatics about certain family dynamics and romances, battle scenes that often play out in the murky night, and heavy-handed discussions about how a family can become a tribe, and then a tribe becomes a nation, and then we get wars. I found myself over the moon, but not in the best sense of that expression.

While the series doesn’t offer the grand statements of similarly themed shows like Foundation, or the high-stakes terror of Invasion, its cautionary tale about humanity’s inevitable self-immolation is disturbing enough to overcome its obvious and familiar narrative deck-building.