The Innocents (2018)

The show is quite easy to watch. The shape-shifting premise proves a flexible, even powerful frame for the usual teenage quandaries--feeling different, being misunderstood by clueless parents, wanting to explore other, kinkier modes of life.

As enticing as the shapeshifting is, it's the simplicity of June and Harry's authentic love for each other that makes The Innocents so dreamy.

Teens, the show’s obvious intended audience, will relate to The Innocents' high dudgeon, but adults will find a show that punches above its weight, defined by both its stirringly dramatic tone and the two charming performances at its center.

It can be a little on the nose at times, and a few of the situations Harry and June get themselves into feel like distracting side stories--but it does offer up a unique blend of genres and influences. It’s John Green meets a more modern version of Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think, and for the majority of its first season it’s a compelling, moving contemplation of what it means to reckon with who you are.

When the action takes us to Norway, where pearlescent clouds conjure the sullenness of Scandinavian noir, The Innocents tends to grow maddeningly stagnant, as if the show had built in longueurs for the convenience of viewers itching to divert their attention to other screens. In England, where Harry and June find time for soul-searching chats on casual strolls while fleeing both Steinar and their parents, its easy tempo feels more purposeful.

The show is at its best when it does very sincere, persuasively performed versions of familiar genre themes.

The pacing is sometimes teasingly effective and sometimes just infuriatingly slow, but I respect its gateway oddness, like The Innocents is preparing a Netflix juvenile demographic for the more substantive, patience-intensive oddness of something like a Sens8 down the road.

At times, this lack of establishing a sense of place and motivation makes the series feel unmoored, but the action moves along rapidly all the way up to its last-minute sick twist.

The eight-episode season (streaming tomorrow on Netflix) doesn’t always make sense and yet it does enough things right--especially in the depiction of naive, impetuous adolescents--that it casts a convincing spell.

At its core, this is a show sweetly more concerned with reaffirming the power lovers draw from one another than watching the world tear them apart in dramatic fashion. And even if what plot surrounds it is ultimately too shapeless to make you crave the too-eagerly teed-up second season, that’s an aim too refreshingly earnest not to embrace.

It’s the kind of show where every element feels directly lifted from another Netflix hit and mashed up into a slightly awkward creation. ... The series is loaded with strong performers, and Groundsell and Ascott are plausibly charming and naive as the innocents of the show’s title.