“Sense8,” the new 12-episode Netflix series from The Wachowski siblings and J. Michael Straczynski, follows eight people in eight cities who find themselves “mentally and emotionally connected” via technology without having any idea why. As they try to figure it out they find themselves hunted by an organization that wants to capture and/or vivisect them.
It stars Daryl Hannah (“Kill Bill”), Naveen Andrews (“Lost”), Doona Bae (“Cloud Atlas,” “Jupiter Ascending”), Freema Agyeman (“Doctor Who”), Tuppence Middleton (“Jupiter Ascending”), Aml Ameen (“The Butler), Terrence Mann (“The Dresden Files”), Jamie Clayton (“Hung”), Miguel Silvestre (“I’m So Excited!”), Tena Desae (“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”), Max Riemelt (“The Depraved”), Erendira Ibarra (“Capadocia”) and Alfonso Herrera (“El Diez”).
The eight cities are Chicago, San Francisco, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Seoul, Mumbai and Nairobi.
Recall the Wachowskis wrote and directed the “Matrix” movies, “Speed Racer” “Cloud Atlas” and “Jupiter Ascending.”
Writer Straczynski’s resume is even longer, encompassing everything from the TV series “He-Man,” “Real Ghostbusters,” “Captain Power,” “Jake and the Fatman,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Babylon 5” and “Crusade” to big-screen projects like 2008’s “The Changeling,” 2009’s “Ninja Assassin” and 2012’s “Underworld: Awakening.” (He also received “story” credits on the big-screen adaptation of “Thor” and “World War Z.”)
Straczynski says he’s already worked out a five-season plan for “Sense8,” so expect to see a lot more of it in the coming years.
Many are comparing “Sense8” to “Cloud Atlas,” which I confess I quite enjoyed.
… a globe-spanning series that offers in ambition, action and visual panache what it lacks in coherence, fleshed-out characters and plausible dialogue. …
... Straczynski and the Wachowskis seem determined to test just how much they can withhold from their audience before everyone loses patience, even if people can watch the whole season in a day. In the early going, at least, the show's larger story is complete gibberish. The smaller stories are a mixed bag, but it's fun watching the creators try to mash together so many different genres and character types into the same show, so that we can bounce from a sex farce in Mexico City to a Bollywood marriage drama to a more personal drama involving a transgender woman (Jamie Clayton) and her girlfriend (Freema Agyeman) in San Francisco.
... Each story line taps into a different cultural cliché. There is Lito (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), a hammy telenovela star in Mexico City who is gay and closeted; Riley (Tuppence Middleton), a goth-dressed and disaffected Icelandic D.J. in London; Will (Brian J. Smith), an idealistic Chicago cop; and Kala (Tina Desai), an Indian uneasy about marrying the rich fiancé that her parents adore (her story includes a Bollywood dance scene). Their personalities match their exotic backdrops, perhaps too neatly, but the fun of “Sense8” is the unsettling juxtaposition of different settings and characters. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... Brilliant as so much of Sense8 is, it’s also at brief times inexplicably lame. …
... happy to say, the siblings’ new Netflix series, Sense8, co-created with J. Michael Straczynski, shows them in revitalized form. … There’s always just enough teased that you want to know more …
... while the streaming service was no doubt hoping for “The Matrix,” in commercial terms, it wound up with something closer to “Jupiter Ascending” and “Cloud Atlas” — or worse, its own “Marco Polo.” A dense sci-fi construct that’s poorly explained through three episodes, “Sense8” bears some resemblance to Fox’s short-lived “Touch,” infusing a sense of global interconnectedness with mystical mumbo-jumbo. But the main problem, simply, is that the show doesn’t make much sense. …
12:01 a.m. Friday. Netflix.
