Prime Video’s “Night Sky,” premiering May 20, can sometimes be an odd duck, a show that launches with an extremely science fiction premise but works best when it comes back to Earth to focus on character and relationships. In fact, when it’s forced to return to its twisting and turning sci-fi plot, it kind of drifts off, too content to wallow in mysteries that the writing purposefully keeps vague and obtuse before bringing them crashing to Earth. When it centers on character, especially those played by Oscar winners J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek, it’s a fascinating examination of partnership, parenthood, and regret. Both performers are expectedly phenomenal here, holding together a show that’s more like “The Leftovers” than “The X-Files,” at least when it’s working.
Summer 2022 TV Preview: Over 35 Shows To Watch
Spacek stars as Irene York, an average Illinois woman who has been married for years to an average guy named Franklin, played by Simmons. The two go about their ordinary lives, although a bit of a conflict with a new nosy neighbor named Byron (Adam Bartley) has added an unexpected wrinkle to Franklin’s life. He just doesn’t like the new guy in town. Perhaps it’s just because Franklin’s an old-fashioned person who doesn’t like change, or perhaps it’s because he’s worried Bryon might discover the secret in his backyard: a portal to another planet.
In the opening scenes of “Night Sky,” Franklin wheels Irene out—her health has been declining since a fall—and the pair enter what looks like an ancient chamber. Their bodies go through something, and they emerge in what looks like a viewing room for someplace truly out of this world. They sit, as they clearly have many times before, watching the night sky from a place that’s nowhere near planet Earth. Dialogue makes it clear that not much has happened through their very limited point of view. There’s a door to the planet surface, but they’re terrified to enter it for obvious reasons. What if they explode when they open it? So they watch the planet from their limited viewpoint in the same way normal couples watch the stars from their Midwestern porch, talking about life and whiling away the hours.
And then everything changes in ways that the Do Not Reveal lists from Prime Video make very hard to explain. Let’s just say that Irene makes a decision and a discovery that brings a young man named Jude (Chai Hansen) into their lives and sets into motion a sequence of events hundreds of miles away. How he got there, why he’s there, and what he wants drives the bulk of the season. Franklin seriously distrusts Jude, even offering to pay him to leave them alone. But Irene goes in the other direction, sometimes feeling like she’s trying to mother the son she lost to suicide years earlier. All of this brings their granddaughter Denise (Kiah McKirnan) back into their lives, but she’s not sure what to make of Jude either.
Meanwhile, across the world in Argentina, a mother named Stella (Julieta Zylberberg) reveals to her daughter Toni (Rocio Hernandez) that they too share a family legacy about something seemingly impossible, sending them on a mission of their own that anyone who has ever seen a TV show knows will collide with the other plot by the end of the season. The writers purposefully keep the Franklin/Irene/Jude and Stella/Toni plots separate for way too long, forcing viewers to try and decipher how they’re going to eventually crash into each other instead of just experiencing the show’s characters and themes.
While this all probably sounds incredibly out there, “Night Sky” is at its best when it’s deeply grounded. It’s remarkable how instantly Simmons and Spacek anchor the show’s more interstellar flights of fancy. Simmons gives one of the most heartbreaking performances of his career as a man who becomes increasingly aware that his days are numbered but isn’t sad about leaving this world behind as much as leaving the love of his life. He can’t imagine a day or a place without her—here, on the other side of the glazy, or wherever we end up after we die—and that’s what scares him. There’s a scene late in the season when Franklin learns of a true emotional betrayal from Irene that opens wounds that he’s clearly never closed, and Simmons gives a speech that’s just shattering, finding a vulnerability he doesn’t often get to show on-camera. It’s one of his most remarkable performances. Of course, Spacek matches him beat for beat, proving again why she’s simply one of the best that ever lived. Watching these two acting giants dig into these characters makes “Night Sky” a must see. From the very first episode, we believe they have been together for decades, and we sense the emotional undercurrents that have defined those years, for good and bad, before they’re explicitly stated.
The truth is that the powerhouse performances at the center of “Night Sky” sometimes feel like they drain the rest of the ensemble and the sci-fi plotting. No one is particularly bad, but the elderly couple stating what has gone unsaid for so long has much more emotional power than the sci-fi narrative that most of the rest of the cast is forced to play. The secondary plot of Toni and Stella’s mission—along with how detached it feels from Irene and Franklin for the entirety of the season—sometimes feels like an entirely different show and takes too much focus in the season’s final chapters. Hansen makes out better, especially in scenes with Simmons and Spacek, but he sometimes feels like a character who’s written in a way that’s designed to disguise twists more than in a way that feels genuine.
“Night Sky” also suffers from the common problem with modern TV in that it feels sometimes forced to spin its wheels to stretch its plot across eight episodes. Characters keep secrets and force conflicts in a manner that can feel manufactured, and it all culminates in a season finale that might have people rethinking what the entire show is about or could be in a second season. However, every time that “Night Sky” threatens to drift off into something disposable, Simmons and Spacek shine, reminding everyone that they’re true stars. [B]