The First

The First is a glossy, often-inert tale of devotion and spaceflight. Its first two episodes treat inevitabilities as questions, and unfold with the zip of a DVR-ed sporting event for which you already read the box score. ... But The First does get better after its first two episodes (before getting worse again) by jettisoning inevitability. ... As flawed as I found the first season, I’ll admit, it hooked me enough that I’m interested to see how they live life on Mars.

It’s that feeling of endlessness, of shapelessness, that makes this collection of mostly interesting parts uninspiring.

[The First] has all the right ingredients of another breakthrough drama series from the streaming service that gave us “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But it becomes so entangled in the human drama of its troubled characters here on Earth that it loses momentum soon after blast off.

The First does a credible job of contemplating the costs of space travel, where, to quote an old line, no one can hear you scream. But wading through season one of this stiff but earnest series, it's possible someone will hear you snore.

The First is under no burden to be as quippy or feel-good as The Martian, as awestruck as The Right Stuff, as gee-whiz as Apollo 13 or From the Earth to the Moon. But it needs to have some compelling reason to tell this story, in this way, and it never really finds one.

In a season spent almost entirely on the preparations for an interplanetary voyage (the two-and-a-half-year round trip will be covered in future seasons, if they come), science, engineering, politics and adventure are rationed to make room for soap opera.

The show isn’t a disaster by any means, and it features a few strong performances. But it lacks forward momentum as it lingers indulgently in some of its least interesting conflicts.

Visually compelling with a nicely pensive music score--courtesy of Colin Stetson of Arcade Fire and Bon Iver--The First is otherwise plodding and padded.

It’s shot beautifully, is occasionally engagingly weird, and is well-acted by Penn and McElhone, especially. The issue is that it’s just fine. It’s the kind of show you could quickly watch every episode of--Hulu will release all eight episodes at once--and then completely forget you ever saw. It makes that little of an emotional impression, and does nothing particularly remarkable, revolutionary, or resonant with its storytelling.

For now, centering The First around a family story that hits painful but often-predictable beats and that siphons away what is, elsewhere, a friskily passionate geekiness is a choice that keeps the worthy show from soaring.

The First takes its sweet time, moving at a glacial pace and staying frustratingly earthbound.