Snowpiercer

I suspect your enjoyment of Snowpiercer the TV show will depend on how much you like the core idea. You could make the case that this is grim, silly dystopian sci-fi, a comic-book idea that got out of hand. I think it’s a fabulous premise, realised here with less anger than in the film, but equal wit and imagination and the same clarity of setting.

This is a great-looking series, with just enough CGI shots taken from outside the train to remind us of the ludicrously spectacular nature of this rolling experiment, and nifty camerawork taking us from the colorful decadence of first class through the “Night Car,” a club dripping with opportunities to explore the sins of the flesh, through the “Ocean Car,” with its tanks of fish, to the dark and hopeless and suffocating world of the tailies. Daveed Diggs gives a powerful performance as Layton.

Could the show be launching a slyly subversive attack on planned economies? I thought about that for a moment, then went back to wondering what they do with all the poop. But with a smile.

What follows is a soapy, ambitious sci-fi season that takes big swings and follows through, engaging with not just class struggle but also leadership, loyalty, compromise, and coalition.

What “Snowpiercer” does best in early episodes is world-building. But it’s problematic for the show’s long-term prospects that the various train cars — cattle car, aquarium car, classroom car, night club car (with multiple levels and a surprising number of staircases for a train) — stir up more initial excitement than the characters or story.