The series "Night Sky", "The Snake from Essex" and "The Gate to Heaven" want to make us believe

The series "Night Sky" and "The Snake of Essex" justify themselves less due to an exciting story and more thanks to the spectacular acting of JK Rollins and Sissy Spacek in the first, and Claire Daines and Tom Hiddleston in the second.

As if to complete the message of both, "The Gate to Heaven" recalls the danger inherent in blind faith

Ben Byron Braude

09/06/2022

Thursday, 09 June 2022, 00:00 Updated: 08:12

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Trailer for the series "Sky of the Night" (Amazon Prime Video)

Next year will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the broadcast of the first episode of "Bags in the Dark," a science-fiction series that became a huge hit (including movies), built the careers of its stars (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) and, no less important, introduced two memorable sentences: "The Truth Is Somewhere," which appeared at the opening opening of each episode, and "I Want to Believe."

The creator of the series, Chris Carter, is apparently gifted with excellent predictability.

Today, these trials are no longer the domain of MDA fans and conspirators alone, and it seems that even those who conducted the world with utter indifference have become much more suspicious and skeptical since the Corona.

Watching the first seasons of "Bags in the Dark" (which will arrive with Disney Plus next week) proves that the series does not stand the test of time, at least not to my taste, but probably without it we would not have won very many science fiction series filling the screen these days.

Which leads me to the next three series, none of which deal with FBI agents looking for aliens, but their protagonists are also trying to find bigger truths about the universe.

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Slowly (slowly).

"Night Sky" (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

"Night Sky", a science fiction drama created by Holden Miller and Daniel C.

Connolly for Amazon Prime Video (the eight episodes of the first season are available to watch), combines two topics that the MDA genre likes to deal with: aging and extraterrestrial life. Of twists that come slowly but effectively. At the center of the series is an older couple, Irene and Franklin York (Oscar winners Sisi Spacek and JK Simmons) - a retired Wenger teacher who has lived in a small town for decades, and leads what seems like a very peaceful and boring life.

But the truth is that the couple are hiding a big secret - very big - that they did not tell anyone.

In the yard of their house there is an old and innocent-looking hut with a portal to another world.

This world, pristine in appearance and full of dunes and stars that cannot be seen from our world, is their escape.

When they cross the gate they come to an observation room and just stare.

Yes, as if we were in Tel Aviv and they are a couple living in a penthouse with a first line to the sea.

This is where the starting point of "Night Sky" comes in and a spoiler warning begins for those who continue to read.

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acting school.

Sisi Spacek, "Night Sky" (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

The story of an older couple who hides a gateway to another world at home is interesting enough to hold a series, but "Sky of the Night" is not satisfied with it and interweaves a few more stories, some stronger and others less, that during the season will connect to one plot.

One day and at a crucial moment in the heroes' lives, a mysterious young man named Jude (Chai Hansen, "The Century", "Tomorrow's Legends") emerges through the portal when he is wounded, and finds refuge in the York couple's home even though its origin and motives are unclear.

Another plot line takes us all the way to Argentina, where Stella and her daughter Tony (Juliette Zilberberg and Rossio Hernandez) themselves oversee a portal to another world found in the church.

How does all this connect to a mysterious cult and heavenly prophecies?

And what does the nosy neighbor of the York couple think of the two elderly people who disappear for hours inside the same hut?

All of this will be revealed slowly (slowly) during the season.

"Night Sky" is the first series that Holden Miller and Daniel C.

Connolly leads as showrunners, which may explain the sense of conceptual clutter the series suffers from, but on the other hand they are also revealed in it as particularly exciting creators.

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The everyday scenes are the ones that make it worth watching.

JK Simmons, "Night Sky" (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

The casting of Spacek and Simmons, one of the best film actors of their generation, who like many others have found a new and encouraging home on television in recent years, turns out to be the real power of this complex series.

The plot of Irene and Franklin that unfolds gently and sensitively over decades is (and excuse me for the cliché) - television at its best.

Those who were lovers of youth and shared a whole life together, grow old in front of each other when the love between them is greater than ever, but the limitations of human existence are becoming heavier on the everyday.

Franklin's memory is betraying him, while Irene is forced to use a wheelchair after a fall.

Instead of getting mad at each other, as you often see in plots about seniors, they are both just there, as strong as a rock in the ephemerality of life.

Simmons, who has already proven in roles like "WeFlash" (for which he won an Oscar) that he knows how to play great characters from life, conveys Franklin's helplessness in the face of memory loss very gently, and Spacek is a school for acting through the eyes only.

The screen relationship between the two reminded me most of all of Michael Hanka's wonderful film, "Love," about a husband who dines his fading wife into oblivion - and if you've seen the film you know there is no greater compliment than that.

Although the mystery at the center of the series continues to drag us into distant worlds, it is actually everyday scenes like a kleptomaniac nursing nurse and a visit from a veteran friend in a nursing home that make up her beating heart, making her worth watching.

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Anyone who disapproves of her face will be deterred here as well.

Claire Daines with Tom Hiddleston, "The Snake of Essex" (Photo: Apple TV Plus)

The mini-series "The Essex Serpent", the sixth and final episode of which will air tomorrow (Friday) on Apple TV Plus, is also a supernatural and mysterious drama that sends its protagonists looking for answers to fateful questions right under their noses.

I mean, not exactly below but really close.

Cora (Claire Daines in her first major television role since "Homeland") lives in Victorian London.

After the death of her husband she decides to go on an independent life accompanied by her personal assistant, Martha (Haley Squires).

At the same time, far from London, there are reports of a snake-like monster returning to the murky waters of a small fishing village called Aldwinter, after more than two hundred years, and arousing great curiosity in the historic Cora.

Her release from the hands of her husband, along with the desire to do more with her life, lead her to the village in an aspiration to find the monster (assuming there is one).

Before she does, she will have to face walls of resistance from the locals full of faith,

Opposite Cora (Daines) stands a local clergyman named Will (Tom Hiddleston, or as Marvel fans call him - Loki), who does not share the same values ​​but is relatively open to other opinions, unlike most villagers.

A bond was forged between the two - as is written on the book covers - against all odds.

"The Snake from Essex", based on Sarah Perry's book of the same name, excels especially in describing the period in which it occurs, the class differences that existed in it and the extreme relationship to gender gaps.

Her wonderful and serene photography envelops everything in a green-gray hue that creates a constant sense of tension, even in moments when everything is run on who rests.

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Great photo and disturbing serenity.

"The Snake from Essex" (Photo: Apple TV Plus)

Based on watching the first three episodes, it seems that the conflict between science and belief that Will and Cora represent is what drives the plot of the series, while the tension around the existence of the monster is a bit left behind.

If that makes you want to watch the series, it's important to note that Claire Daines and Tom Hiddleston do a particularly excellent job and manage to surpass many of the young actors in period roles (there is no pompous talk here, thank God).

At the same time, those who have had a hard time tolerating Daines because of her excessive ‘faces’ in previous roles will probably shy away from her here as well.

Just like "Night Sky" the "Snake" also justifies its existence not thanks to a breathtaking suspense plot but thanks to the excellent acting of the cast and character development.

It is also worth noting Squires (best known for "Me, Daniel Blake" and "Midwife!"), Who takes the character as an assistant to eccentric districts and manages to add dimensions of irony to a series that is anything but light-hearted.

It's not certain the answer to the monster's existence will be given by the end of the season, and it's unclear how much it will satisfy viewers' suspense, but in any case, judging by it as a period drama, "The Essex Snake" stands out as another successful product from Apple's production line.

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Eccentric districts.

Haley Squires, "The Snake of Essex" (Photo: Apple TV Plus)

The search for superhuman forces here on Earth, brought me back to the story of cult members whose story recently surfaced in the docu "The Gate to Heaven: The Mother of All Cults" Bite and Udi Westing.

The Gate to Heaven cult made headlines around the world in 1997, when 39 bodies of her friends who had committed suicide were found near San Diego, in order to reach the spaceship they claimed was waiting for them behind a comet approaching Earth (Bug 2000 was the thing that bothered humanity the most) in those days).

The sect was founded decades earlier by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Natales (an opera student and nurse in a psychiatric hospital) who were known by nicknames - Du Votti or the "Two", and claimed to have been revealed (yes, like the Christian Jesus and the characteristics of many religions). , Actually belong to a people of aliens who need to 'move on to the next stage' in evolution.

The four-part series consists of many archive footage, including interviews with cult leaders, taped footage left to their believers, and even new footage that includes interviews with relatives of 39 cult members who committed suicide, as well as with those who eventually decided to stay here.

The story of "The Gate to Heaven" is amazing and inconceivable and makes every other cult you have encountered to date look like a Scout movement - and perhaps that is why it has been dubbed the "cult of all sects".

Most of all, it demonstrates how powerful the power of self-conviction is and how extreme people will follow in their beliefs.

Whether the thing they believe in are two humans claiming to be aliens, a portal to another world, or an underwater monster.

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• Night Sky - Series

• The Snake from Essex - Series

• TV review