The First

This is not a space show, or at least it won’t be till the end of the season. But it does what it does with a high degree of intelligence. ... There’s nothing pedestrian about The First, though. It orbits high above the cable traffic.

This eight-episode series created by Beau Willimon has all the right stuff. Sean Penn, in his first TV series regular role, delivers a tremendously affecting performance. ... Some genre fans may gripe it takes the show too long to achieve liftoff, but that's the point. [17-30 Sep 2018, p.24]

This is an ambitious, bold, beautiful, occasionally trippy, big-picture sci-fi drama.

What The First is: a surprisingly affecting drama about several families and a planet in crisis.

Not all of the series’ risks pay off, and the overall approach is so counterintuitive that it’s bound to frustrate audiences who expected more of a problem-solving space mission story along the lines of Apollo 13 or The Martian. ... But once you get used to The First’s peculiar rhythms, it weaves a spell that’s somewhere between a ’90s John Wells drama (think ER or The West Wing) and a slowed-down TV answer to Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life especially).

For now, you’re advised to ride out The First, sluggishness and all. There are enough bright spots to bring it all home, with Mars very gradually getting closer to becoming more than just a talking point.

Hagerty and Ingram do, at times, veer toward predictability but it doesn’t impede the series overall feel (and, let’s face it, this is a series that needs viewers to be emotionally invested in its characters.) Willimon’s writing, pacing and sense of place, so evident in “House of Cards” (particularly in Seasons 1 and 2) resonates here.

Enamored with its characters to a possible fault, The First is cut and paced like the roughly 368-minute director’s cut; you can imagine a two-hour film, probably with the same budget, that hits the same emotional beats and divides audiences like previous high-concept sci-fi stories like "Contact" did. As is, The First is a noble, ambitious series, but one that demands equally ambitious viewers.

Some viewers may find “The First” too slow, especially in the first two episodes, but “The First” becomes more engrossing as it unfurls, especially when the show’s scope broadens out from Tom and explores the other characters.

Downbeat but uplifting, the series is less a sci-fi thriller than a character study. Like its star--Sean Penn, who here does a lot of muscular brooding--the show promises solemn rumination, and more often achieves an earnest heaviosity.

The series builds well after its stop-and-start beginning. It reminds you that before House of Cards went off the rails with soap opera high jinks and Kevin Spacey hamminess, it was a promising show about the personal cost of power. Think of The First similarly, rather than as Mars Trek, and you could be intrigued.