Sense8: The Finale

Wolfgang is a prisoner of BPO, but his fellow sensates have taken the enigmatic "Whispers" prisoner in turn. The two sides arrange a prisoner swap in Paris, but both are eager to double-cross the other and gain the upper hand in their clandestine war. For BPO, the sensates are a weapon and a resource to be exploited. All the sensates want is freedom. The two sides are poised for a final confrontation.

Sense8 is one of the oddest shows on television, an anthology show with eight main characters in which the central character of each story can call upon the skills and advice of the other seven, despite each story being very different in tone and ideas. It's also a show that is fairly over-brimming with positivity about humanity and about life. If the relentless cynicism of the likes of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead gets too much for you, than Sense8 is the antidote, a show in which the characters can escape murderous torture, gun down some bad guys, and then get together with their cluster for a telepathically-communicated musical throwdown to Depeche Mode. As you do.

When Sense8 was cancelled after its second season, it was the raucous reception by the fans that saw Netflix agree to commission a TV movie to round off the story. This presented Lana Wachowski with a difficult choice to make. Sense8 was envisaged as a five-season project. With more than half of that material remaining, should she chuck all of that out and craft a simpler resolution to the story, or try to cram in another 36-odd episodes worth of plot into a single special? Her conclusion was to try to do a bit of both. So the central struggle of this finale is firmly on the sensates vs. BPO, with Whispers as the key in that conflict. That's fine and focused, but Wachowski also brings in a huge number of other elements which there is simply no time to develop, such as a neutral council of sensates who have so far stayed out of the struggle but are now willing to support one side and then don't do very much. Some of this excess baggage should have been dropped.

Sense8's finale gives fans a lot more of what they've seen so far: our characters swapping skills, having emotional heart-to-hearts and a couple of musical numbers and party scenes, along with the show's standard, fantastic location filming (the use of Naples is excellent, but the actual use of the real Eiffel Tower for the grand finale is jaw-dropping). However, it also drops the characters' individual storylines to focus on the grand mystery. This is possibly unwise, as the show's central storyline of shadowy government or trans-national organisations and mysteries dating back decades always felt a bit undercooked and took too much time away from the characters (a similar problem to Orphan Black and latter-day Lost). Still, at least the finale straightens out the show's mythology and resolves it with admirable efficiency.

Possibly less successful is the decision to pay off every single character in the show. And I mean every single character. Sylvester McCoy's elderly sensate has a part to play, as does Wolfgang's Conan the Barbarian-quoting best friend, and Kala's eternally confused husband and Capheus's political team and Will's cop partner from Chicago and Riley's chill hippy dad and Nomi's transphobic/homophobic mother and Sun's Korean cop nemesis/boyfriend and that bald girl from the second season and Angelica and her cluster (despite them all being dead) and pretty much everyone who hasn't been killed off. Jamming all of these characters into the special is nice, but unwieldy, massively self-indulgent and not very logical. Even worse, the proliferation of characters beyond the central eight means that some of the main cast of characters, most notably Capheus and Lito, don't really get much to do.

The finale also has some decidedly undercooked action scenes. Sense8's action scenes have always been phenomenal, the Wachowskis relishing their relatively low budget to get back to the ground-level tricks for shooting gunfights and martial arts they haven't had to employ since the original Matrix. For the finale, they clearly had much less money and time available than normal. The fight scenes feel perfunctory and the CG in the gunfights (to simulate bullet sparks) is poorly integrated with the live action. Given there's quite a few action scenes in the finale, this is definitely a bit of an issue, but ultimately a minor one.

But these questions of logistics and over-indulgence and logic are perhaps the wrong ones to address. Sense8 was a show about eight well-drawn characters from completely different backgrounds coming together and finding commonality despite their very different origins, and overcoming the obstacles in the way. The show wasn't perfect - bum dialogue and a tendency to schmaltz dogged it from early on - but its flaws were often endearing, its characters resolutely human and its message determinedly hopeful. Hopefully we will see its like again.

Sense8's finale (****) is available to watch on Netflix worldwide now, along with the rest of the series.

SENSE8 finale gets airdate

The series finale of Sense8 has been given an airdate. The movie-length grand finale to the story will air on Netflix on 8 June.

Netflix cancelled Sense8 last year after, curiously, airing the second season with almost no marketing, meaning that even big fans of the show were unaware it had returned. Netflix had chosen instead to keep marketing 13 Reasons Why, despite that show already being a big hit, and the need to get eyes on Sense8 being much greater because of its larger budget (Sense8's second season cost an eyewatering $9 million per episode). This was a bit of an own goal, to put it mildly, and after a fan campaign which involved mass rewatches of the first two seasons, Netflix agreed to fund a two-hour finale. This will wrap up the second season's cliffhanger ending and will provide a conclusion to the series overall, despite writers J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis previously saying that the show was meant to run for an additional three seasons.

Some fans are hoping that the finale is successful enough to warrant a third season being commissioned, although that seems unlikely.

The most expensive TV shows of all time

Last year there were a couple of attempts to make a list of the most expensive TV series of all time, which failed because they used radically outdated information and didn't take account of some of the newer shows on the block. So let's take a stab at this with slightly better information.

It should be noted that this list applies to ongoing TV shows, not special event mini-series or made-for-TV (or streaming) movies. Including those projects, the 10-episode HBO event series The Pacific is comfortably the most expensive TV show ever made with a budget approaching $270 million, or a mind-boggling $27 million per episode. John Adams, another HBO mini-series, spent $100 million on 7 episodes, meaning it matched the seventh season of Game of Thrones at around $14 million per hour. Band of Brothers, The Pacific's forebear, cost $125 million for 10 episodes, with an additional $15 million in marketing.


14: Lost
$132 million for Season 1

Lost gets onto the lower end of this list by dint of it's Season 1 budgeting set-up. The show was budgeted at around $4 million per episode - already on the high end of things for a 2004 network TV show - but the cost of getting J.J. Abrams on board and setting up a filming facility in Hawaii saw the budget blast upwards to almost $6 million per episode. The pilot alone cost $14 million and saw the production team have to fly in an actual aircraft fuselage for the crash scenes. They then had to remove the wreckage and leave the Hawaiian beach in absolutely pristine condition. This cost a fortune. ABC's financial department was so aghast that the head of the network was fired on the spot. Fortunately, Lost turned out to be the biggest and most popular show ABC had launched in years and it made a healthy profit in foreign sales. In addition, with the set-up work done for the first season, later seasons were able to drop the budget to around $5 million per episode, and this was reduced further when Seasons 4-6 were given shorter orders.

13: Altered Carbon
$7 million per episode (Season 1)

The newest show on this list, Netflix's Altered Carbon features not just elaborate sets (including a full futuristic cyberpunk street that could be shot from multiple angles to depict different parts of the city) and stunning CGI, but also cutting-edge filming techniques involving state-of-the-art 5K cameras and some incredibly elaborate action sequences. Thanks to basing shooting in Canada, the show was able to deliver a formidable amount of production value for an - by Netflix standards - relatively modest budget.


12: Stranger Things
$8 million per episode (Season 2)

For its debut season, Stranger Things was given a $6 million budget by Netflix, perhaps a sign that they were not expecting great things from this drama (contrasted to the much bigger budgets given to Marco Polo and The Get Down). Fortunately, the show was a break-out mega-hit for the network and its second season was given a hefty budget increase (indeed, some reports suggest that, including marketing, it may have been closer to $9 million per episode). With Season 2 hinting that the show might start moving further afield from its small town setting, we may see this jump higher in future seasons.


11. Star Trek: Discovery
$8.5 million per episode (Season 1, after budget overruns)

As the show to launch CBS All Access, relaunch the franchise on screen and lead the charge for CBS's new take on Star Trek (in opposition to Paramount's films), Star Trek: Discovery was given a very generous opening budget of $7 million per episode. After the show had been "Fullerised" (see later on for an explanation), that budget somehow came out at around $1.5 million per episode higher. Still, the show looks it, with fantastic visuals and draw-dropping sets. Fortunately, the show was pre-sold in a special deal to Netflix that put it in profit before a second of footage was shot, so CBS came out way ahead on the deal.

10. Westworld
$9 million per episode (Season 1)

Westworld, HBO's SF epic, is expensive and looks it. The show's budget was, unusually, patterned irregularly, with each episode budgeted according to script need far ahead of time. It's more normal for a studio to assign a per-episode budget and then leave it up to the showrunners how they divide that (resulting in those famous "bottle episodes" of TV series with few or guest cast and shot entirely on the standing sets, usually following very expensive ones; Breaking Bad's The Fly may be the best recent example). This pattern budget moved from $25 million (for the pilot and the cost of constructing the standing sets) to $8 million for the cheapest episode of the season and then up to $10 million for the most expensive, leaving the average somewhere around $9 million.


9. Sense8
$9 million per episode (Season 2)

The first season of Sense8 cost a cool $7 million per episode, making it one of the most expensive shows ever back in those ancient days of, er, 2015. With its elaborate stunts and fight scenes and globe-trotting nature - the show shot in 8 different cities in 7 different countries - the show also looked like it put every penny on screen. Alas, the second season saw significant cost overruns, including the questionable decision to add several shooting days in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at a moment's notice which put over $2 million extra on the budget. With Season 2 underperforming in viewing figures - although some of that is on Netflix, who dubiously chose to keep marketing their drama 13 Reasons Why instead of switching on the marketing for Sense8 Season 2, meaning lots of people missed that it had been released - and the Wachowskis unwilling to compromise on the budget, Netflix canned the show. After a mass outcry, they did agree to fund a 2-hour TV movie to round the series off, which will air later this year.


8. Marco Polo
$9 million per episode (Season 1 & 2)

Netflix poured a lot of money in the visuals and cast for this huge, sprawling costume epic, which they hoped would be their very own Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, a lacklustre script, poor critical reception and lukewarm viewing figures saw it canned after two seasons.


7. Rome
$9.5 million per episode (Season 1)

HBO and the BBC poured a huge amount of money into this show, buoyed by the success of their previous collaboration on Band of Brothers. Alas, the TV market in 2005 was not ready for a show this expensive. Poor viewing figures in the UK - not helped by the decision to cut a full episode from the first season run (with scenes ham-fistedly inserted into other episodes) - saw them pull funding after the second season and HBO panicked and shut down the show. Just a few years later they admitted they'd made a massive mistake, as DVD and Blu-Ray sales had been stratospheric and the show later had a critical reappraisal that saw it elevated to being considered one of HBO's finest accomplishments. With the elaborate sets in Italy still standing (currently being used as a tourist attraction), it's possible we could even see a return for HBO to the Roman Empire: they've been considering a fresh adaptation of I, Claudius for a few years which would effectively be Rome: The Next Generation.


6. Friends
$10 million per episode (Season 10)

One of the biggest factors that kills a show is the cost of keeping your increasingly famous cast on-board. For the final season of Friends, the cast had negotiated a mind-boggling $1 million per episode each, meaning each episode cost $6 million before a frame of footage was shot. This was unsustainable for NBC and they decided to end the show after the tenth season, despite the show's continuing worldwide popularity. A bigger mystery might actually be what on earth the other $4 million per episode was spent on.

5. American Gods
$10 million per episode (Season 2, Season 1 after budget overruns)

To adapt Neil Gaiman's award-winning fantasy novel, Starz gave producer Bryan Fuller a very healthy budget of $7 million per episode. However, this proved insufficient for Fuller's needs and the season eventually emerged $30 million over-budget, to the network's palpable displeasure. What saved American Gods from immediate cancellation was a highly lucrative international distribution deal with Amazon outside the US. What couldn't save Fuller was that, having "Fullerised" the first season, he received an offer to make Season 2 for $9 million per episode, which he took to be a budget cut (rather than a $2 million per episode budget increase, which is very definitely how Starz saw it) and objected to. Unable to reach an accommodation, he left his second show that he'd managed to burden with budget overruns in the same year (Star Trek: Discovery having already been through the same thing). Fortunately, Neil Gaiman and Jesse Alexander have taken the reigns for the second season, promising to rein in costs, so hopefully the story will now be completed as planned.


4. The Get Down
$12 million per episode (Season 1, with reported cost overruns going much higher)

Netflix budgeted for an impressive $133 million for the first season of The Get Down, which was extraordinarily generous. However, it was the cost of working with Baz Luhrmann, the visionary director behind films such as Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby. Luhrmann, it turned out, did not like working under such tight restrictions and went over-budget. A lot. Some reports place the show's final budget for its first season of 11 episodes at somewhere closer to $200 million. With poor streaming figures and a mixed critical reception, Netflix understandably dropped the project like a hot potato.


3. E.R.
$13 million per episode (Season 6)

In comfortably the most expensive network TV deal of all time, NBC shelled out an insane $13 million per episode for the sixth season of E.R. This came about because Warner Brothers produced the show under contract for NBC and this contract ended after Season 5. CBS offered a higher amount of money, forcing NBC into a bidding war which crippled the show's finances. Later seasons saw viewing figures decrease, so NBC was able to negotiated a lower fee, much to the relief of their bean-counters.


2. The Crown
$13 million per episode (Season 2)

Netflix's most successful series of all time is also its most expensive. This lavish period drama about the early years of Queen Elizabeth II's reign has an all-star cast, complete with meticulous set reconstructions of real locations and elaborate (if mostly invisible) effects to sell the period setting.

1. Game of Thrones
$16.6 million per episode (Season 8)

Game of Thrones started off relatively modest, with a budget of $6 million per episode for the first season. HBO could have gone higher but decided to start modestly after the debacle of earlier expensive shows like Rome. The budget grew quickly: $6.9 million per episode for the second season, over $7 million per episode for the third season and so on until it hit the magic $10 million per episode barrier in Season 6. For Seasons 7 and 8 producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss requested fewer episodes so they could spend more time on producing them, but HBO generously allowed them to keep the same production budget, which meant that Season 7 of Thrones (7 episodes) came in at over $14 million per episode and Season 8 (6 episodes) at over $16 million. This isn't including HBO's lavish marketing and advertising for the show as well. Thrones has set new benchmarks in TV production quality but also expense, which is something that TV production companies may eventually come to rue. But for HBO, it's worked splendidly.


There are challengers on the horizon, however. Game of Thrones has a spin-off prequel in the planning stages which will likely be expensive (just not as expensive as the mothership in its last few seasons). Sony Television are working on a Wheel of Time series which can't help but be quite pricey. Netflix's fantasy drama The Witcher will likely have significant production costs, as will Showtime's Kingkiller Chronicle prequel show.

But the two hundred-pound gorillas in the room are Disney and Amazon. Disney have a live-action Star Wars TV series in pre-production under conditions of tremendous secrecy. Given it won't just be the first-ever live-action Star Wars show but will also be launching Disney's new streaming service in late 2019, there's a lot riding on the show and they will spending accordingly (there will also be a new Marvel live-action show to help launch the service). Even more formidable is Amazon's deal with Warner Brothers and the Tolkien Estate to buy the rights to make a Lord of the Rings prequel show. A rumoured $250 million was shelled out just for the rights, with a commitment to spend $150 million per season for five seasons. Including the rights costs, this would comfortably make the new show (expected to air in 2020) the most expensive TV series ever made.

In the midst of all these figures flying around, it may be instructive to remember that you can still get a popular show for a lot less money. The second-biggest TV show in the world (after Game of Thrones) right now is AMC's The Walking Dead, which costs that network an astonishingly low $2.75 million per episode, despite its huge cast and elaborate make-up effects. If you ever wondered why The Walking Dead seems incapable of getting its cast into just one episode and spends five episodes of people walking around looking constipated for every episode of decent character and plot development, now you know.

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SENSE8 finale enters pre-production

The two-hour finale movie of Netflix's Sense8 has entered -preproduction, with the script being distributed for the cast for read-throughs before shooting begins.

Sense8 was cancelled by Netflix earlier this year, after citing disappointing streaming figures for the second season (despite Netflix themselves doing an awful job of advertising it). A strong fan campaign, helped by lots of news stories and more people watching the show, allowed Netflix to give the series a reprieve and allow the writers to tie up the story.

The finale, intriguingly, is written by Lana Wachowski with novelists David Mitchell and Aleksander Hemon. Wachowski previously collaborated with Mitchell on the Cloud Atlas movie. J. Michael Straczynski, who co-created the series and co-wrote the first two seasons, is surprisingly absent. Despite some speculation to the contrary, Lily Wachowski has also not returned to contribute to the finale (although there remains a chance she may return as a producer or director).

Officially, this will be the last-ever episode of Sense8, but there remains a small chance of a further revival or a spin-off if this finale is well-received.

Pornographic website offers to fund future seasons of SENSE8

Adult entertainment website XHamster has offered to pick up Netflix's recently-cancelled TV series Sense8, in an apparently serious proposal to series showrunner Lana Wachowski.

Sense8's second season aired earlier this year to apparently disappointing viewing figures, especially compared to the show's lavish $9 million-an-episode budget (the second-highest on American television, behind only Game of Thrones). Netflix regretfully pulled the plug, but after an intense fan campaign, agreed to produce a two-hour finale movie so Lana Wachowski and co-writer J. Michael Straczynski could wrap up the cliffhanger ending the show was left on.

Now XHamster has stepped in, posting an open letter to the Wachowski sisters (Lilly Wachowski stepped back from Season 2 of Sense8 after co-producing the first season, but may return for the finale) in which they make a serious offer to pick up the series properly, presumably meaning they would fund the remaining three years of the planned five-season run. Obviously this would require Netflix licensing the property to an adult website, but given Netflix's own history of giving a new home to previously-cancelled series (like Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development), they may be open to the notion.

Certainly XHamster has the financial firepower to make it happen. The website is one of the biggest and most heavily-trafficked on the entire Internet, dwarfing almost every single news outlet and bringing in colossal revenues from advertising. XHamster doesn't have much of an outlay cost, since most of their own content comes from other companies or is, er, crowd-sourced, so they end up making stupendous amounts of money and not doing very much with it. As the XHamster statement says, they can easily afford to produce Sense8 at the same level as Netflix was able to, which is mind-boggling.

Whether this idea goes anywhere remains to be seen, but I'm pretty sure that fans of the show would be happy to see the full five-year story concluded according to the Wachowskis and Straczynski's vision. We await their official response - and Netflix's - with interest.

Netflix resurrects SENSE8 for a two-hour finale

Netflix have confirmed that they will be resurrecting Sense8 for a two-hour finale to resolve the cliffhanger the show was left on when they cancelled it last month.

According to Netflix, the outpouring of fan support for the show had impressed them and made them reconsider their plans to simply dump the show where it was. The final two hours will resolve the unresolved storylines, most notably the fate of main character Wolfgang, who'd been taken prisoner by the sinister corporation that was seeking to exploit the sensates. The rest of the gang teamed up - in the flesh, for the first time - in London to help rescue Wolfgang and managed to counter-kidnap their old nemesis Whispers.

No word on a production or release schedule for the finale has yet been set.

Netflix cancels the excellent SENSE8

Netflix have cancelled Sense8 just two seasons into its planned five-season run. The news came as something of a surprise, as Netflix had opened negotiations with the cast to extend their contracts on the show just a couple of months ago, which was widely interpreted that they were looking at moving forward with a third season. There'd also been indications that a final decision would not be taken until August, allowing more time for discussions with the producers and writers.

Sense8 is Netflix's most expensive show, with Season 2 clocking in at a reported $9 million per episode, vastly more (some say twice as much) as any of its tentpole Marvel Studios series. It's also far more than the likes of Stranger Things or Orange is the New Black. The only other Netflix shows in the same ballpark are House of Cards (a lot of which is actor fees) and the in-production Altered Carbon. Given that Sense8 reportedly drew much smaller audiences than any of those shows in the US, it's perhaps less surprising that Netflix decided to call it a day.

However, Sense8 has been a much bigger show in many foreign territories: a Season 2 storyline set in Sao Paulo was interpreted as a big thank you from the producers for making the show a massive success in Brazil, as well as several other South American countries. Given Netflix's plans to grow in international markets, the show was considered a boon for those territories.

A major stumbling block may have been the chaotic production of the second season. J. Michael Straczynski, one of Sense8's three writer-producers alongside the Wachowskis, played a much more key role in Season 1, bringing with him his sense of budgeting nous, getting maximum bang for the buck and pre-planning from shows like Babylon 5 (which often achieved end results more impressive than the contemporary Star Trek shows on about 40% of the budget). Season 1's budget was considerably smaller than Season 2's, even though in scope and scale it didn't look that much less. Straczynski played a much smaller role in Season 2's production and Lily Wachowski dropped out altogether, leaving production in the hands of Lana Wachowski. It appears that there was much more last-minute reshoots and even planning of entire sequences: the Sao Paulo sequence was apparently, written and shot at the last minute when the production realised they'd be able to fit in a shoot during the city's Pride march, despite the ballooning effect this had on the budget. There was also the recasting of one of the eight leads and much more elaborate fight and effects sequences, including an ambitious car chase on the streets of Seoul.

Netflix's renegotiations with the cast which seemed to be paving the way to a third season may suggest that Netflix was in fact willing to continue the show if the spiralling budget was brought under control and reduced, perhaps with a reduction in the number of countries and cities that were being filmed in. It may be that the producers were unwilling to consider such a move. Alternately, Netflix may have deemed the early streaming figures for Season 2 to be too disappointing to continue, although in this case they may have to take the blame themselves for a strangely lacklustre and underwhelming marketing campaign: Netflix blanked adverts for their latest (and very cheap) breakout show 13 Reasons Why at the time when Sense8's second season was released with barely a whisper.

It remains to be seen how Straczynski and the Wachowskis plan to wrap up the story left dangling at the end of Season 2, although comics and novels are possibilities. Due to the high budget, a move to another station or channel seems extremely unlikely.

Sense8: Season 2

The sensates are in danger. The sinister Whispers has formed an unwanted, hideously invasive mental connection with Will and is stalking his every move, hoping he betrays his location. However, Will is likewise stalking Whispers, determined to defeat this enemy before he can kill anyone else. The rest of the group has to deal with their own problems, but soon find new allies waiting as they make contact with other clusters and discover their numbers are far greater than they could possibly imagine.

Sense8's first season was a deliberately-paced introduction to eight different, diverse characters hailing from completely different parts of the world, each accompanied by their own set of supporting characters but linked by a shared mental connection. It was excellent, but it was slow and at times risked becoming self-indulgent.

Season 2 has no truck with this. After the Christmas special bridging the two seasons (which gets the show's apparent annual need for a rave scene and orgy out of the way quickly) the show kicks into gear and slams the accelerator down so hard you'll be forgiven for thinking this is the same show. By the end of the second episode our characters have already reversed many of the devastating incidents of misfortune that afflicted them in the first season and the story is moving forwards on all fronts.

The show employs the same structure that we saw the first time around, with each of the eight sensates having their own story to follow as well as being unified by the ever-growing threat of Whispers and the organisation he fronts. The biggest difference is that we now know all eight characters and they now know all each other. When confronted by individual danger they can call upon the entire team's help rather than just one or two as with last season and this definitely massively ups the stakes in both emotional and dramatic terms. Seeing the team join forces to expose the identity of one of Whispers' superiors based on a glimpse of his office, like a telepathic edition of CSI, is a great idea. It's also good to see slightly under-served characters having more to contribute: Kala gets to use her scientific knowledge to great effect in several scenes (including working out how to blow up a van during a gunfight whilst Wolfgang and Will are arguing about whether to flank or fall back).

This is also the year that the show ups the stakes in action and visual terms. Season 1 had some excellent moments (rocket launcher, anyone?) but Season 2 takes it up to the next level. Lana Wachowski - flying solo for the first time as a director (Lily took a break this year) - revisits the Matrix lobby scene with a shoot-out in a restaurant between two sensates (complete with their own cluster, meaning sixteen skillsets being showcased together) which is ridiculously good fun. Even better is a high-speed car chase through the streets of Seoul - complete with vehicles flipping through the air and crashing for real - which is jaw-dropping and looks as good as any feature film. The production values, if anything, step up a notch in line with the confidence of the directors and returning co-writer J. Michael Straczynski.

But the show's characters remain the core focus of the show. As well as the central cluster and their returning allies (including a still-excellent Freema Agyeman, acting on an altogether different level to her stint on Doctor Who) there are new characters, including a wonderfully batty turn by ex-Doctor Who, ex-Radagast the Brown Sylvester McCoy as an older Scottish sensate and Valeria Bilello as a sensate from another cluster who works as an enforcer and fixer for a shady German businessman. But the core cast remains at the centre of attention, including newcomer Toby Onwunmere who is given the difficult task of replacing he likeable and energetic Aml Ameen as Capheus. Onwunmere is a different kind of actor, less funny and more intense, and the adjustment is a bit rough (not helped by a couple of comments lampshading the change) but by the end of the season he has managed to make the role his own. The rest of the cast are on top form, with Jamie Clayton in particular improving from the first season where her massive, hacker-driven infodumps of exposition could be clunky.

The second season also spends some time developing the backstory of the sensates - no Lost-style teasings here, the sensates have pretty mundane origins and well-established rules on how they operate - and how many clusters there are and how they operate. "Our" cluster, it turns out, is pretty lucky in having so many complimentary skills. We also learn that just being a sensate isn't enough to make you a good person and that some sensates are downright nasty. There's more to come on this front but the sheer size of the sensate population means that the writers have a lot of material to play with in coming seasons.

Weaknesses? Well, there are some very jarring tonal moments in Season 2 which don't quite connect with the rest of the story, some bum lines of dialogue and occasional over-indulgence in positivity (as refreshing as this is from shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead almost making a fetish out of grisly cynicism). A scene where Nomi and Nita form a secret hackers' alliance with Anonymous, who it turns out know all about the sensates and have been helping protect them (no, seriously), feels like it was biked in by a totally different writer who'd done three minutes Internet research on the organisation before he wrote it. Also, and this was exacerbated by watching this show immediately after Mr. Robot, the hacking scenes in general are pretty unconvincing. Overall, though, this year emerges as slightly stronger than its predecessor season, more confident, much better-paced and with more of a sense of purpose and energy.

Season 2 ends on a titanic cliffhanger, which is a sign of huge confidence from the writers, producers and Netflix themselves. Sense8 is massively expensive, probably the most expensive show on the Netflix roster apart from the in-production Altered Carbon, and it hasn't quite hit the same level of success in the USA as the likes of Stranger Things and Daredevil. However, it's a lot more popular in many other parts of the world (such as Brazil, which gets its own huge shout-out in an episode set in Sao Paolo) and a third season seems pretty likely at this point. Hopefully Netflix won't tease us for quite so long like they did last time and also won't make us wait two years for the next full season.

Sense8's second season (****½) is wacky, bizarre, over-brimming with optimism and also deeply rooted in interesting and engaging characters, with an interesting backstory and some of the greatest action scenes ever filmed for television. It is available on Netflix now.

Season 2 of SENSE8 arrives on Netflix

Season 2 of Sense8 has hit Netflix and should now be available to viewers worldwide.

The first season of Sense8 remains, easily, the most interesting thing Netflix has done (maybe not quite the best, but certainly the most original), a tale of empathy and how people are defined and enhanced by their shared humanity. The Christmas special - which was really the first two episodes of Season 2 combined for an event episode of television - was likewise accomplished and intriguing.

The second season is up on Netflix right now.

SENSE8 Christmas Special released

Netflix have released their Sense8 Christmas special. The new, double-length episode is designed to allow people to refresh themselves with the story, the characters and where everyone was left at the end of Season 1.

You can watch the episode right now on Netflix. Season 2 of Sense8 proper will be released in May 2017.

Netflix confirm release dates for Season 2 of SENSE8

Netflix have confirmed the release dates for Season 2 of Sense8.

Season 1 of Sense8 consisted of 12 episodes released on 5 June 2015. Season 2 will again consist of 12 hours, but the release pattern will be different. The first 2 episodes will be released as a two-hour event TV movie - a "Christmas special" - on 23 December this year. The remaining 10 episodes will then be released on 5 May.

Lana Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski have written the second season (Lily Wachowski has taken the second season off, but may return for a third), with Wachowski, Tom Twyker and Dan Glass returning to direct.

Sense8: Season 1

A woman named Angelica kills herself in a derelict church in Chicago. She dies alone, but the moment of her death is imprinted in the minds of eight other people in different parts of the world: Riley, Will, Sun, Capheus, Wolfgang, Kala, Lito and Nomi. From that moment onwards, those eight people can touch each other's minds, see through their eyes, talk and share their skills and abilities. They have become sensates, eight who can act as one, the result of a different strand of human evolution. But their skills and abilities are jealously desired by a mysterious organisation and the man - known only as "Whispers" - they send to find them.

Sense8 is a bewilderingly original, maddening, confusing TV show, refusing to stay still and be pinned down. One second it's a melodramatic Mexican telenovella starring a handsome action hero living in the closet. The next it's a brooding, gritty Berlin crime drama. Then it morphs into the story of an Icelandic DJ living in London trying to find herself, but denying the secrets of her past in Reykjavik. The next episode might explore transgender identity issues, the next might delve into the story of family and religious life for a young female scientist living in Mumbai. One key storyline focuses on corporate drama in a South Korean business that segues into a Seoul prison drama. Another is a comedy about a cheerful Kenyan man who drives people around Nairobi in his Jean-Claude Van Damme-themed bus...which takes a darker turn when he invokes the ire of the city's gangs. Finally, it's a modern Chicago cop drama musing on race relations and family struggles, right up to the point our cop hero runs into another sensate.

At its heart, Sense8 is a show about empathy. The ability to step into another human being's shoes, imagine what their life is like and try to relate to them emotionally as well as intellectually, is a vital part of what makes us human. It's a vital tool for writers and journalists. Empathy is vital for humans to coexist with one another and understand each other's place in the world. The denial of empathy, the reduction of other people, other cultures, entire other strands of humanity to cliches, to generalisations and to "the other" is to deny their humanity and justify the worst excesses of crime, war and bigotry.

Although a quintessential part of humanity, it's also a nebulous concept to build a TV drama around. J. Michael Straczynski tried once before in his epic mid-1990s space opera series Babylon 5. A subplot explored the lives of telepaths, people who can touch each other's minds and live each other's lives, engaging in an exchange of thoughts, ideas and emotions that "mundanes" could never understand. It was a thoroughly intriguing idea, but one that had to jostle for attention alongside other stories involving war, religion and space-going teddy bears (long story). Straczynski clearly wanted to do more with it, at one time planning a feature film spin-off focusing on the concept, but it was never made.

A meeting with the Wachowskis, who at the time were fresh off their own movie about human lives touching and affecting one another across time and space (Cloud Atlas), led to the development of Sense8. The writers wanted to create an epic show exploring empathy, diversity, emotion and the truth of what makes people people, their joys, their fears, their loves and their prejudices. It was a tall order, but you're never going to accuse the creators of The Matrix trilogy and Babylon 5 of lacking vision or ambition.

Sense8 is mostly successful, although given there's never been anything quite like it before it's hard to come up with a metric to measure it by. Possibly the closest touchstone is Lost, particularly its structure and construction as it builds up the story of eight main characters (and several supporting ones) in tremendous depth and detail, often employing flashbacks and thematic devices so we get to know them better. The presence of Lost actor Naveen Andrews may be a nod to that inspiration (Straczynski was a fan of Lost, as the producers of Lost were big fans of Babylon 5). However, the central mystery in Sense8 is nowhere near as all-encompassing as Lost's, or Babylon 5's for that matter. Sense8 is the product of an older and more mature writer, with Straczynski employing surprising restraint in his storytelling. The show's mythology and main story arc are fairly low-key until the last two episodes, with most of the season's twelve episodes instead focusing on each character and the local struggles they are facing.

To achieve the authentic tone they wanted, the writer-producers made a decision which I can imagine appealed massively to Netflix's PR department, right up to the point it was costed and the budget presented to them. Usually most "international" shows are filmed in one city, with a mixture of set dressings and CG used to make that city look like another. For example, Lost visited Frankfurt, Seoul, London, Guam and Sydney whilst almost never stepping foot outside of Hawaii. Sense8 has no truck with that: to film scenes in nine different cities, the production simply filmed in those cities. And yes, this meant the production had to move between San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico City, Reykjavik, London, Berlin, Nairobi, Mumbai and Seoul for real. This immediately adds a huge amount of authenticity to the project. They also timed shoots to coincide with major street festivals and events (such as San Francisco's Pride march and religious celebrations in Mumbai) to add a sense of scale to events. They even filmed several live childbirths for one particularly memorable scene in the series. Although they often look expensive, a lot of Netflix's original productions are quite modestly-budgeted. Not so much Sense8. This is a big-budget production that looks like a huge amount has been spent on it, but no so much that they producers can get lazy and rely on effects or explosions to make up for good storytelling.

The one thing Sense 8 had to nail, and nail absolutely correctly, is tonal variation. Sense8 is a comedy; it's a martial arts movie; it's a soap opera; it's (briefly) a Bollywood musical; it's one of those gritty crime dramas that turns into a ludicrous Jason Statham action film halfway through. And it has to be able to move between all of those hats easily without blowing the viewer's sense of disbelief. For this viewer, it worked brilliantly. It even sells the tonal variation by inserting "less serious" characters into other storylines: Wolfgang's hardcore Berlin gangster shtick turns into outright lunatic farce when Mexican action thesp Lito helps out, resulting in a sudden escalation into rocket launchers and comical quips whilst gunning down an improbable number of enemies. Similarly, Lito's story is mostly played for laughs right up until the moment when Wolfgang jumps in to help him in a fistfight, when it suddenly becomes bloodier and more serious. Later on, Lito's difficulties with self-identity and sexuality become emotionally raw and real when transgender hacker Nomi relates the story of her own difficult upbringing and coming to terms with who she wanted to be. In such ways bonds are formed between the characters, initially in pairs and trios, and later on between all of them.

There are several key scenes which help with this, perhaps the best of which is the characters simply sharing a musical karaoke moment together at the end of the fourth episode (yes, you will have 4 Non Blondes "What's Up" rattling around your brain for the next few months as a result). Later on the characters witness the moment of each other's birth (featuring some actual live births filmed for the purpose) as a piano concerto wells up in the background. Another scene has a character evading pursuit with each of the other seven characters jumping into her body and steering her between obstacles using their skills. Another scene has all eight of the sensates coming together in one moment soundtracked by Sigur Ros, because Sigur Ros automatically makes everything awesome. There's another scene in which the gang get their wires crossed when several of them are, er, enjoying amorous moments at the same time. And so forth.

Some of the actors are established faces: Daryl Hannah as Angelica and Naveen Andrews as Jonas are the most immediately recognisable, whilst Doctor Who fans will recognise Freema Agyeman as Nomi's girlfriend Amanita. Agyeman was a reasonably good actress on Doctor Who, but in Sense8 she's an absolute revelation. She has some pretty challenging scenes to handle, but blows each one out of the water.

Of the main cast, Tuppence Middleton brings both street-savvy steel and emotional vulnerability to the role of Riley, whilst Will Gorski does an excellent job as all-American cop Will who rapidly has his horizons expanded. Will and Riley's connection forms both the emotional lynchpin of the season and also results in the actual storyline being pushed along the most, so it's helpful that their chemistry is highly convincing. Wachowski regular Doona Bae is both highly intelligent and adept at violence as Sun, although her character arguably suffers a little in the late season period from only showing up when arse needs to be kicked and disappearing for long stretches (although given her character's circumstance, perhaps that's not too surprising).

Max Riemelt is a well-known and very busy German actor, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of him in English-language productions after Sense8. He is excellent as the safe-cracking, Conan the Barbarian-quoting criminal Wolfgang. Tina Desai is likewise excellent in the role of Kala, although her storyline of family drama feels a little undercooked compared to some of the rest. However, it comes to life later in the season when Hindu religious tensions in Mumbai spill over and her previously underplayed abilities with Science! are called upon to help her fellow sensates.

Ami Ameen brings tremendous, infectious energy and enthusiasm to the story of Capheus, which probably has the widest range of tonal variations. Ameen is excellent. Unfortunately, due to a falling-out between Ameen and the producers, he's been recast for Season 2. Hopefully the new actor will be able to bring a similar level of commitment and passion to the role.

Jamie Clayton - a transgender actress playing a transgender character - is tremendously, emotionally honest and real when playing her character of Nomi, especially touching on storyline and character moments that clearly derive from her real life (something Straczynski, in particular, is renowned for). However, she struggles a little more in her role as a font of exposition. Nomi is the group's resident "hactivist" (groan) and starts accumulating data on what's going on by hacking the bad guys' internets and bringing down their firewalls and doing all that TV hacking stuff. To be fair, it's not actually that bad compared to a lot of shows, but it feels like a bit more authenticity was needed to overcome the IT cliches.

One of the most impressive performances comes from Spanish actor Miguel Angel Silvestre as Lito, the closeted Mexican action hero deeply in love with his boyfriend Hernando (a likewise accomplished performance by Alfonso Herrera) who then reluctantly ends up with a "beard" in the form of fellow performer Daniela (Erendira Ibarra). At first glance Lito's story serves as the comic relief only to take a turn for the more dramatically intense later on. In fact, this is the story that sounds the weakest on paper but on screen ends up being one of the best. It also features a hilarious moment where the Wachowskis completely take the mickey out of their own past work, when it turns out even cheap Mexican action films are still stealing ideas from The Matrix.

The performances, then, are brilliant. The writing is very effective for the most part, moving between genres and tones with accomplished ease. There are some monster action scenes across the season and, without their usual infinite buckets of money and six months of CGI rendering to fall back on, the Wachowskis resort to giving us some in-camera, practical stunts, wire work and gunfights that are more real and convincing than anything they've done since the original Matrix.

 

Where I think people will fall off or on the Sense8 bandwagon is the pacing and structure. Sense8 is, for most of its first season, almost an anthology show, just with characters from one story able to help out briefly in another. The focus is clearly on each character's own up-front problems in their own immediate vicinity. The story of what is going on with the sensates, why they can do what they do and who is trying to capture them unfolds very, very slowly in the background and occasional moments of rising to the fore. This slow-burning fuse to the story can be frustrating, but only if you view the series through the prism of "What is the answer to this mystery?" If, on the other hand, you engage with the characters it's not a problem. Viewer patience is eventually rewarded in the final two episodes of the season when the ongoing mystery explodes into prominence, a very nice car is set on fire and two of the sensates finally actually meet for real.

Other problems? Er, the main title sequence and music are both pretty underwhelming, which is odd as Netflix actually had a great potential one they used in their trailers (the one set to Weshley Arms's cover of "Need You Tonight") and the rest of the soundtrack is pretty good. That's about it.

The first season of Sense8 (****½) is messy, weirdly-paced and sometimes misses the profundity it is aiming for to such a degree that it is inadvertently hilarious. It's also phenomenally well-written, often beautifully-directed (this is easily the Wachowskis' best directing job since the first Matrix film) and tremendously human. It's bold, experimental and offbeat in a way that none of Netflix's other shows - no matter how well-made - are, or have even tried to be. Sense8 shoots for the stars and perhaps falls short, but its ambition is breathtaking, its scale epic and its characters both charming and compelling. It is available to watch through Netflix now. Season 2, which is wrapping up production now, will air on Netflix in early 2017.

RED MARS adaptation greenlit with BABYLON 5 showrunner in charge

Spike TV has given a full season order for Red Mars, a TV series based on Kim Stanley Robinson's classic Mars Trilogy of novels. J. Michael Straczynski, the creator/producer/writer of Babylon 5 and recently the co-creator and writer of Sense8 for Netflix, will be the primary writer and showrunner on the series.

Robinson's trilogy consists of the novels Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993) and Blue Mars (1996), along with a companion volume of short stories and essays, The Martians (1999). The trilogy opens in the year 2026 when fifty men and fifty women - the First Hundred - travel to Mars on the colonisation ship Ares. The opening part of the first novel covers the months-long journey out to Mars, with the scientists and engineers getting to know one another and dealing with crises like solar storms which threaten to kill them before they even get to the planet. During the voyage an ideological and philosophical debate begins which eventually comes to dominate the colonisation saga: whether Mars should be left in the state it is found or terraformed to support human life.

The rest of the first novel concerns the building of Underhill, the first town on Mars, and the establishment of an outpost on its moon Phobos. As the years pass more colonists are sent and technology rapidly develops, with canyons and craters being roofed and pressurised to create the first towns and, later, cities. A life-extension drug is developed which allows characters at the start of the story to still be alive and in excellent health forty years later. However, as the population of Mars swells, so does the control of the meta-national megacorporations which have displaced the nation-state as the primary power on Earth. This sparks a desire for independence, and the scene is set for a bloody revolution. The later novels, Green Mars and Blue Mars, cover an additional 200 years of future history.

J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 featured a long-running, series-spanning storyline about the Mars colony's desire for independence and freedom.

It is likely that Straczynski will be changing some things about the books. First off, the timeline will likely be changed (since we are more like thirty years from the establishment of the first colony on Mars rather than eleven). We are also likely to see a lot more action and drama, particularly during the events of the latter two books which are more free of plot incident than the first novel. However, as Babylon 5 and Sense8 both show, Straczynski is a thoughtful writer who can write entertaining television even about controversial issues like religion, immigration and the morality of science, so don't expect these elements to be dumbed down too much. Indeed, Straczynski appears to have been a fan of the novels, with the Mars storyline in Babylon 5 feeling at least very partially inspired by Robinson's books (that were released simultaneously with the show's opening seasons).

Vince Gerardis, who helped shepherd Game of Thrones to the screen, will co-produce alongside Straczynski, who will write and be the primary showrunner. Kim Stanley Robinson will serve as a creative consultant on the project, but it's not yet been confirmed if he will write any episodes.

Spike TV, known for its more young adult male demographic than its thoughtful, hard SF one, appears to be appealing to a new audience with this project. They have also made a significant investment in the new show, ordering a full 10-episode first season instead of a pilot. It is possible that the success of the Ridley Scott film The Martian inspired them to move forward with the project.

According to Straczynski, his work on Red Mars will not interfere with his writing for the second season of Sense8, which was recently commissioned by Netflix.

SENSE8 renewed for a second season by Netflix

Sense8 has been renewed for a second season by Netflix, it was announced yesterday (or on 8/8).

Sense8 got an initially tough reaction from reviewers who only had access to the first four episodes. However, subsequent reviews of the entire season were much stronger. This slow-burn approach hasn't worked for all viewers, but the show has picked up more viewings thanks to word-of-mouth. Creators J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis have indicated that the show could last for five years in total.

I'm still yet to sample the series, as I've been waiting for the home media release, but this is good news for the fans.

SENSE8 released tomorrow

Netflix release all 12 episodes of Sense8 tomorrow. This new series is a collaboration between the Wachowskis (The Matrix Trilogy, Bound, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending) and J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5 and way too many comic books to count).

Early reviews are promising, praising the performances, mystery and premise but warning against a slow opening episode.

Straczynski claims that the show has a projected five-year story arc but that the first season is self-contained enough to satisfy viewers.