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Beacon 23 - Season One Review |
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Beacon 23 streaming on Amazon Prime and MGM+ has many of the traits of
low budget series and films. Let us set the background first. The series
is very loosely based on Hugh Howey’s novel, about a beacon, which is
the interstellar equivalent of earth’s lighthouses of ages past. It acts
as a warning of danger to other ships passing through that particular
sector of space. As you may have guessed, the 23 designates there are at
least 22 others and the fact a Beacon 24 is mentioned suggests at least
one additional one.
Before we attempt to justify our opening statement, let’s focus on some
of the brighter spots in the series, which is set 200 years in the
future. Barbara Hershey appears in one episode of season one and even at
seventy-six years of age she is both beautiful and a very good actress.
Lena Headey whom many know from her performances in The Game of Thrones,
is the star of this show and her performance far exceeds both the script
and most of the other actors. The story’s premise is not the issue here,
it is the flawed script and whether it is the performance of the actors
or the manner in which they were directed this they are incongruent.
There are better ways to relay a two-hundred years history of others who
inhabited the beacon than to dedicate full episodes, in a very
disjointed manner. Is this the life of Bart the AI drone or is this the
story of Astra’s (Headey) and her lifelong relationship with the
artifact. It is supposed to be the latter.
There are two other performances we think merit a double thumbs up,
Sydney Ozerov-Meyer as Grisha, the mother of Astra (then known as
Parsim) when she was a child. She portrays a character who is
believable, without the over-the-top acting of many of the others in the
show. We would like to have seen more of her, and maybe we will in some
capacity in season two. Natasha Mumba as Harmony, the personal AI for
Astra is also quite good.
Now if you have watched the show, you will note that we left out
mentioning Stephan James the other star of the show who plays Halan. It
is difficult from this perspective to know how he was directed, but this
is a case of less would have been more for this character. In some of
the more subtle moments there are glimmers of a good actor, so that
leads us to wonder aloud if he was directed to act in this manner. Yes,
we are aware that Halan is an AWOL soldier who suffers from PTSD. That
brings a certain amount of intensity with it, but not constantly. There
needs to be ebbs and flows to the character. There is very little that
is authentic in this performance and again we want to emphasize this may
not be as much on the actor as it may be on how he was directed.
There were too many villains introduced in this series. It seems like
every episode has a new villain or villains and again it detracts from
continuity in the story. To make things worse, with this being 200 years
in the future one has to think that the execution of force or defending
oneself would be much more sophisticated than the props used that remind
one of the very first Star Trek series from the 1960s. While we are
making that comparison, the set also reminds us of the original Star
Trek series in terms of how fake it looks. There is no way to sugarcoat
that one. We live in an era of special effects and significant
technological advances and even if this had been a palatable script,
putting actors on an impoverished set does not give them a fighting
chance to hold the audience’s attention.
We watched all the episodes of Beacon 23 twice, and the flaws were even
more noticeable the second time. What was also noticeable is how much
Lena Headey carries this show and how vital Natasha Mumba is to the
show.
Let’s hope for season two of Beacon 23, scheduled to make its debut on
April 7th, that the writers flesh out the other characters
more and that if directing was the reason for so many questionable
performances, that they learn from those errors.
Photo of Lena Headey courtesy of MGM+. Protected by copyright ©
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