The Expanse: Season One (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD) is the most ambitious original science fiction series created by the SyFy network since their award-winning Battlestar Galactica reboot. Based on the best-selling novels by James S. A. Corey (the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) and developed in collaboration with the authors, The Expanse is a dense mix of space opera, political conspiracy, and galactic mystery. The first season, which essentially covers the events of “Leviathan Wakes” (the first novel in the series), reaches from Earth to Mars to the asteroid belt, a frontier society of space stations and ships and independent-minded space settlers (known as Belters) under the jurisdiction of the Earth government.
In the opening episode, an ice mining ship survives an attack by what they believe to be a Mars military ship with a weapon more powerful than anything seen before and the crew goes into hiding as they become a target. It’s not just a ship on the run, however. The survivors are stuck in deep space in what is essentially a short range craft, a working ship that hasn’t the fuel or the range to get to a colony and can’t trust any ship they may find in the traditional shipping lanes. Any alliance they make is fraught with suspicion, and they are fair game to the scavengers on the fringes of the deep-space mining industry. Even among the members of the crew, trust is in short supply.
Other stories follows a Belter cop (Thomas Jane in a not-entirely-convincing futuristic haircut) who goes rogue to find a runaway girl who has joined the resistance and a UN diplomat (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who suspects a Mars conspiracy and discovers a more insidious plot. It’s a complicated story in the Game of Thrones vein, more like a serialized novel than a traditional episodic series, and the scope of the story expands until the separate strands finally meet in the climactic episodes.
The special effects are quite good—SyFy has clearly gone all in for this show—and the creation of the Belter world of cramped space stations and mining ships is appropriately scruffy and lived in. But what makes the show work is the rich social and political culture of the universe, with the frontier society of the Belters not unlike the original American colonies, a hard place where independents and individualists fomenting revolution against long distance rule by a rich mother country that treats them as second class citizens. And about halfway through the season, the series begins to expand its story far beyond the parameters suggested in the first episodes. By the end of the season, you realize this is not the same show you thought you were getting into. It’s much more interesting and expansive. There is a genuine epic in the making here. A second season is set for 2017.
10 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, plus deleted scenes.
Togetherness: The Complete First Season (HBO, Blu-ray, DVD) – The touchy-feely title aside, the HBO series Togetherness, created by Jay and Mark Duplass with longtime Duplass acting company regular Steve Zissis, is a comedy about the frustrations of love and the difficulty of sustaining relationships in the modern world.
Mark Duplass and Melanie Lynskey play Brett and Michelle, a married couple with two children whose home is suddenly overrun when Brett’s best friend Alex (Zissis), a schlubby, unemployed actor, and Michelle’s older sister Tina (Amanda Peet), who has impulsively moved to Los Angeles from Texas after a bad breakup, arrive at the same time. While Brett and Michelle struggle with a marriage malaise—Brett, a sound engineer for indie films, hates his job and finds family life a chore while Michelle is bored as a stay-at-home mom who feels that life has passed her by—Tina appoints herself a makeover guru to sad sack Alex and he falls hard for the energetic, sexy, but manipulative Tina.
In another show, the couple’s love and commitment would help them weather their disappointments and the middle-aged male schlub might win over the hot chick but Togetherness is a smarter and more realistic show than that. It explores personal disappointment, professional frustrations, unhappiness, and bad decisions made out of desperation, and it acknowledges the pain that comes from emotional (and physical) distance and ill-considered honesty. The Duplass brothers made their reputation as indie filmmakers with offbeat humor and awkward honesty and they bring both to this sharp portrait of adulthood in the modern world without resorting to juvenile comedy.
8 episodes on DVD and Blu-ray, with short featurettes on each episode, cast interviews, and deleted scenes.
Set in the Union-occupied city of Alexandria in the Confederate state of Virginia in the midst of the American Civil War, Mercy Street (PBS, Blu-ray, DVD) explores the conflicts between North and South through the uneasy interactions between the occupying Union forces and Northern doctors at a Union army hospital. Set up in what had been the city’s luxury hotel, the Southern civilians and occasional wounded Confederate soldier are treated along with the Union men in a town where free black citizens, slaves still not emancipated, and the occasional runaway passing through on the way north are also part of the volatile mix.
At the center of the sprawling cast is Mary Phinney (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a Boston widow and abolitionist sent to be the hospital’s head nurse, and Emma Green (Hannah James), a southern belle in the town’s leading family who volunteers as a nurse in the hospital to help the Confederate soldiers neglected by the Union staff. Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) is the forward-looking civilian doctor who clashes with the veteran military surgeon who prizes authority over modern medicine and Gary Cole is loyal Southern patriarch attempting to balance his Confederate loyalties with keeping the peace under military occupation.
The first original scripted drama produced by PBS in over a decade, Mercy Street is a medical show by way of a historical drama, an American story that takes its cues from British period pieces and fills its cast with strong American actors. The first few episodes set up the conflicts, both political and personal, and establish the contradictions among the characters, but the series really comes alive when the personal stories begin to drive the drama and the conflicted characters find themselves torn as their loyalties are tested. It improves with each episode and the season ends with some startling events that promise an eventful second season.
6 episodes on two discs on DVD and Blu-ray, with short featurettes and deleted scenes.
19-2: Season One (Acorn, DVD), a drama about patrolmen in a rough neighborhood of Montreal, is a gritty drama in the vein of the American cop drama Southland or NYPD Blue. Adrian Holmes stars as Nick Barron, a street cop with a reputation for being reckless and getting his partners hurt, as he does in the opening scene when they rush into a building without back-up. Jared Keeso is his new partner Ben Chartier, newly arrived from the provinces and considered a rookie and rube despite his eight years on the job. Nick would rather go solo and gives the new guy the silent treatment but Ben proves himself both a good cop and a loyal partner over the course of the season as they deal with everything from domestic abuse and petty crimes to a pedophile with a kidnapped child and the attempted murder of a fellow officer, which rouses the squad to turn vigilante and deliver their own justice.
There’s plenty of internal conflict in the department, from a manipulative commander who wants Ben to turn informant on Nick and get him kicked off the force to a jerk of an officer constantly trying to shirk his duty, and it offers a frank presentation of real-life issues common to police officers, from alcoholism and anger management issues to divorce and violence, and as Nick visits his former partner, left almost paralyzed and unable to speak from a bullet to the head, we’re reminded that they put their lives on the line on every call. For added drama, there’s a mole in the department and the intelligence leaks lead to the deaths of fellow officers.
Nick and Ben don’t really like each other, but they have one another’s backs on the streets, and that’s what really matters. The series is not well known outside of Canada is only available via the Acorn subscription streaming service in the U.S., but it’s a well-made show with intelligent writing, complex characters, and gritty drama.
10 episodes on DVD, with a featurette.