Away review – Hilary Swank space drama fails to launch

There is an unexpectedly old-fashioned feel to Away (Netflix), the glossy and ambitious new space drama led by two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank. At times, it resembles a blockbuster film from the 90s, at others, a big, mainstream television show from the 00s, but somehow, it has lost the essence of modernity that you might expect from a series set in the near future, made today.

Swank is Emma Green, the commander of a five-strong international team of astronauts and scientists embarking on a three-year mission to become the first humans to set foot on Mars. Things go wrong, a lot. Happily, for anyone made nauseous by the wobbly antics of George Clooney and Sandra Bullock in Gravity, Away is more concerned with how people deal with catastrophe than it is with catastrophe itself. This makes it an intriguing prospect, because it promises not to take the obvious path. This is its strength and its main flaw. For a story with such a dramatic premise, it resists bombast. The action sequences are enough to get the heart pounding, but are rarely overcooked. Instead, it spends around half of its time on Earth, exploring the emotional impact of such a mission on the family, friends and support crew on terra firma, and there is a soaring soundtrack, as everyone learns something new about themselves.

Swank does her best as Emma, but her character is not well-defined enough to move beyond Generic Television Heroine, in this soapy soup of a series. Emma’s teenage daughter, Lex, is troubled by the fact that her mother is going to spend three years away from home on a mission that only has a 50/50 chance of survival; her husband, Matt, whom she refers to as “Shithead” – apparently affectionately – has a health condition that makes her absence tougher. Emma seems so uncertain about whether she wants to be in space that her presence on the spacecraft Atlas is unconvincing. Partly, that’s the idea, I suppose – the main thread is that the crew has to learn to accept her authority – but it is hard to see how she would be in charge in the first place. When she considers popping home, from the moon, an act that would make her the first astronaut in history to abandon a mission, her boss at Nasa tries to talk her out of it, explaining that it would undo decades of progress for women in space. “You’re talking feminist bullshit,” she snaps, gracelessly. Early on, when tasked with broadcasting to the world, she says, “I wish I had the words to describe what I’m seeing.” It’s hardly “one giant leap for mankind”, but perhaps public speaking wasn’t in the job description.

Even if the script doesn’t always deliver, Away looks the part, and television really has come a long way, in terms of the scale of what we can see on the small screen. When focused on the crew, the show seems smarter, and their stories are far less by the book, particularly when it comes to family dynamics. It is a little tough to watch such spirited international collaboration, at a time when we could really do with seeing some, but they have a better phone signal on the moon than I do in my kitchen, so it isn’t supposed to be entirely realistic. If Away spent less time at home, and toned down its saccharine side, then it could be something special. As it is, it feels like a series that is on its way.