Ways to alienate a planet
ALIENS, eh? Honestly, those blighters never let up, forever trying to invade our planet.
God knows what they want it for. I assumed our planet was stuffed.
Mind you, in this new 10-part sci-fi thriller from Apple TV+, it takes a while for anyone on Earth to twig that’s what’s heading their way – namely, a full-blown invasion by extraterrestrial entities.
Frightening things have started occurring all over the world, from storms and fires and random explosions to craters opening up in the ground.
In one scene, a whole class of kids suffer sudden, unexplained nosebleeds (what is it with these sci-fi shows and their sudden, unexplained nosebleeds?)
But none of the characters we meet across the various settings here (hold tight, by the way, as the action bounces back and forth between Britain, America,
Japan, Afghanistan and several hundred miles into space) have the faintest idea why any of this is going on.
The soldier on desert patrol with his colleagues (Shamier Anderson); the retiring Oklahoma sheriff (Sam Neill); the cheated-on wife and protective mum (Golshifteh Farahani); the Japanese space program’s mission control woman (Shioli Kutsuna); the British lad on a school trip (Billy Barratt) – they’re all just going about their daily business when – whoomph! – suddenly all hell breaks loose.
So how long will it be before the chilling truth sinks in?
Well, three episodes in (the first three are up now, with a new one coming every Friday for seven weeks) and everyone still assumes this is one huge global terror attack.
“We don’t yet know who’s behind these awful events,” announces a sombre TV news guy. “No group has claimed credit yet.”