THE MIDNIGHT SKY
12 On Netflix from Wednesday
George Clooney’s straggly white beard is the only vaguely festive aspect of Netflix’s downbeat pre-christmas release.
The actor, who also directs, plays Augustine Lofthouse – a morose, terminally ill boffin who finds himself stranded in 2049 in an Arctic observatory three weeks after a mysterious apocalyptic event.
While Clooney the actor strolls empty corridors, slurps cereal and glugs whisky, Clooney the director starts cutting to what feels like a completely separate story.
Now we’re dodging asteroids with the crew of the spaceship Æther who are on a two-year mission to go to one of Jupiter’s moons, poke around a bit and come back again.
Long scenes set in a Star Trek-style ‘holodeck’ suggest they are all missing their families at home, although two lovestruck crew members (David Oyelowo and Felicity Jones) have foolishly decided to start a new one.
Meanwhile, back on poisoned Earth, Augustine is experiencing dreary flashbacks to days spent arguing with his girlfriend about starting a family. And when a mute little girl (Caoilinn Springall) suddenly appears in the canteen, we get our first guess at how he’ll tie all the strands together.
Clooney seems to have learned a fair bit from his time on the sets of Gravity and Solaris. The Midnight Sky is his adaptation of Lily Brooks-dalton’s 2016 novel Good Morning, Midnight, and it looks gorgeous and sounds great.
Sadly, the human drama is far from attractive. The dialogue is flat, the tone is relentlessly morose and we spend so much time jumping between strands that it is almost impossible to care about the characters. You’ll probably have more fun with the Eastenders Christmas special.