Sense8

Sense8's ensemble is contemporaneous, creating an exciting real time tension as the characters take advantage of their seven partners' unique specialties and experiences to unravel mysteries in their own respective scenarios.

[The stories] mostly do stand on their own. Some are better than others.... a winning cast.

It can lead to indulgent storytelling, but in the case of a series like Sense8, real artistry, too.

Despite the lack of A-list Hollywood star power, the mysterious show boasts strong characters and compelling actors bringing them to life. And though the story sometimes meanders about like a child at play in a schoolyard, the premise holds enough intrigue to call viewers back to experience more.

Slightly mad, madly majestic and overwhelming, Netflix's new offering Sense8 is one of the most ambitious sci-fi dramas on TV since the Battlestar Galactica reboot in 2004.

The filmmaking here is fluid and the performances are strong across the board.

The siblings have frequently struggled to fully realize their ideas, too often failing to find the exact right balance between the silly and the sublime. (Multi-culti dance party in Matrix Reloaded, I’m looking at you.) With Sense8, they finally achieve that harmony.

Overall, the first season of Sense8 doesn't quite work the way it should. But it's hard not to step back and say, "Goddamn--the balls on that show." It's the pole-vaulter who knicks the bar with her ankle on the descent

Sense8 is a show forever trapped between two things--its core artistic impulses and its need to over-explain everything that happens within its confines. That makes it at once beautiful and maddening, either a complete travesty or a whacked-out masterpiece--and sometimes both in the same scene.

The ultimate paradox of Sense8 is that it can give away so little about its ultimate destination in three hours of screen time, and still be seductive enough to make hour four an attractive proposition.

The plots of Sense8 dovetail and separate with a fluidity that’s a characteristic of good storytelling and editing. Some of the subplots are more interesting than others.

Beautifully shot and sublimely silly, Sense8 is slower than “The Matrix” and not nearly as thrilling.

With so many crudely drawn characters, most of whom never interact face to face, and a less-is-more approach to explaining the origin and goal of the sensate experiments, Sense8’s sumptuous visuals are its only consistent selling point. But usually, the look is all Sense8 needs, since it has far too many moving pieces to enroll the audience in trying to assemble them into a larger picture.

This is a show that has the most lofty objective of all--getting people around the world to care about one another--and yet it struggles with the much simpler goal of making viewers care about the characters. It’s ambitious and passionate and very deeply flawed.