Director Juan Jose Campanella’s “Night Sky” grounds its fantastic premise heavily in the everyday. This is a venerable dramatic tradition, and an intelligent approach, especially when science fiction has become synonymous with space operas and action. Unfortunately, when the miraculous and the mundane collide in “Night Sky,” the mundane wins.
The series opens in rural Illinois, where elderly couple Franklin and Irene York (J.K. Simmons and Sissy Spacek) keep a secret chamber hidden on their property that spirits them light years away to an observation room on a barren planet. The two have been making the trip for so long that they are as blasé about it as taking a weekend hike. Meanwhile, in Argentina, single mom Stella (Julieta Zylberberg) guards a similar portal with almost religious devotion, keeping it hidden from her teenage daughter Toni (Rocio Hernandez).
When a mysterious young man (Chai Hansen) appears via the alien world, and upsets the couple’s equilibrium, these central narratives begin to intertwine with various subplots involving the Yorks’ granddaughter Denise (Kiah McKirnan) and their nosy neighbor Byron (Adam Bartley).
Spacek and Simmons are the show’s backbone, and do well with the scripts they’re given. Much of the story is told through the shifting emotions on their faces, and Spacek is vulnerable and a joy to watch work. Simmons is good throughout, but occasionally lays the folksiness on too thick. He shines in Franklin’s sternest moments.
A dramatic slow burn can be pure magic when done right, but “Night Sky” doesn’t pull it off. It’s an overly protracted version of a story that should have been told in under two hours. The writers noodle around with the potentially fascinating concept to the point that it loses most of its dramatic tension, like stretching a good “Twilight Zone’’ episode until it breaks.
“Night Sky” can’t be faulted for its depiction of small-town Americana, but it pushes the story’s everydayness in its first four episodes so hard that it subsumes anything engaging about the plot. The idea of using a science fiction series as a springboard for dealing with very real problems like senility, physical infirmity, and children predeceasing their parents is worthwhile. Unfortunately, the series overplayed its hand, banking on the elderly Yorks’ aging pains to play as deeply dramatic. This could have worked, if balanced properly, but too much of the series fixates on these details. The Argentina sequences are more successful because Stella’s character is so intensely duty bound to her mission.
The current fascination with multiverse stories and vicarious otherworldly escape routes is almost more interesting as a commentary on the present zeitgeist than it is as entertainment. It seems that after the last two years, a lot of people would love to uproot themselves from our time and space continuum and find a more benign one. Sadly, the one “Night Sky” presents isn’t worth the trip. Go outside and look at the real night sky: It’s much more magical than this series.