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Review
Sense8, season 2 episode 1 review: the cringe factor has been dialled down but this sci-fi drama is still endearingly wacky
The Matrix trilogy established the Wachowski siblings as Hollywood’s preeminent conjurers of brain-frying spectacle. High-concept silliness was likewise a signature of series one of Sense8, their trippy Netflix drama about globe-hopping psychics which gained a cult audience on its debut in 2015.
The second season picks up straight after a feature-length Christmas special that decked the halls with cerebellum-melting portentousness (hence the confusing styling of the first instalment of the new run as “episode two”). As before the story revolves around eight geographically scattered “sensates”: mind readers with a spiritual and emotional connection and – useful this – the ability to mentally zip across continents and enter one another’s headspace. On their trail is a shadowy cabal straight out of an X-Files boxset, while Daryl Hannah pops up occasionally as the guardian angel “mother” who originally unlocked the heroes’s latent powers.
Thankfully we are spared a repeat of the toe-curling sequence from the Xmas dispatch in which our favourite empaths cavorted in slow-motion in the sea. That scene – with its unfortunate echoes of the perfume commercial parody from Zoolander – distilled the saga to its earnest and pretentious essence. The Wachowskis’s message to the world is that humanity would get along so much better if we were all prepared to loll around in the water together as if participating in a mega-budget Benetton ad (bonus marks to anyone with a gym-honed physique and catwalk-ready cheekbones).
The cringe factor is dialled down considerably as the new season gets underway. In Amsterdam, trendy Icelandic DJ Riley Blue (Tuppence Middleton, still not quite nailing that early Bjork accent) is tending to comatose Chicago cop Will Gorski (Brian J Smith). She has her work cut out as he is waging an extra-sensory battle with the evil Whispers (Terrence Mann), a traitorous sensate leading a conspiracy against his fellow clairvoyants.
But the tables are about to be turned on the nefarious nemesis as, in America, hacker Nomi (Jamie Clayton) – a transgender woman just like the real-life Lana and Lilly Wachowski – comes close to unpicking the mystery of her identity. Meanwhile, other characters flit in and out, their sensate connection facilitating instantaneous contact even though they are oceans removed.
These include recently outed Mexican heartthrob Lito Rodriguez (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), Kenyan Jean-Claude Van Damme fanatic Capheus Onyango (Toby Onwumere, replacing season one actor Aml Ameen) and Korean businesswoman-turned-kick boxer Sun Bak (Doona Bae). Implied throughout is the idea that, regardless of religion or skin tone, strangers with seemingly nothing in common can become fast friends if given the time to get to know one another.
Even by the standards of Netflix science fiction capers – see the equally baffling OA – it’s all thoroughly bonkers. Yet with dystopian sci-fi in the ascendency, the Wachowskis are to be applauded for daring to strike a positive note. A series that insists on seeing the good in humankind, Sense8’s hippy dippy world view is jarringly out of step. Maybe that’s the point. In an age of gloom and teeth gnashing, strident optimism gives this often cheesy affair an unexpectedly subversive edge.