Streaming on: Apple TV+
Episodes viewed: 5 of 10
Business has been booming over at the H.G. Wells estate for the past few years. We’ve had Rafe Spall and Eleanor Tomlinson chasing tripods around Edwardian London in BBC One’s The War Of The Worlds, and a Fox/Canal+ co-pro that offered a rather more sinister, somewhat bonkers and très Français adaptation that had us all being slaughtered by robot dogs. Now Apple TV+ has entered the chat, bringing us a show inspired by rather than adapted from Wells’ original, but one that’s arguably the most faithful in capturing the sense of confusion, panic and well-earned paranoia that defines both the novel and Orson Welles’ infamous radio drama.
Despite beginning with a prologue in which a Yemeni farmer is kicked into touch by something resembling the Predator, Invasion makes almost no mention of an extra-terrestrial threat until nearly halfway through the ten-episode season. Instead, rather than taking a top-down view of the ongoing invasion, showrunners Simon Kinberg and David Weil have opted for a more limited, character-led take, allowing events to gradually unfold through the eyes of a number of disparate people as unexplained phenomena ravage the globe.
The show’s deliberately languid pace saps it of urgency.
In Oklahoma, retiring sheriff John Bell Tyson’s (Sam Neill) search for a pair of missing meth-heads leads to a mysterious crop circle and a plague of locusts. In New York, well to-do Aneesha Malik (Golshifteh Farahani) sees her house shaken by an explosion shortly after discovering her husband has been shagging a foodstagram influencer. In Afghanistan, Navy SEAL Trevante Ward (Shamier Anderson) has his unit decimated by a mysterious, pulsating object. In Japan, communications engineer Mitsuki (Shiori Kutsuna) tries to find out why a Japanese space shuttle has ceased radio contact. Meanwhile, in England, metal raining from the sky causes a school bus to crash, leaving a geography field trip stranded at the bottom of a quarry.
Each of the different threads plays out with unhurried care, the unfolding global disaster secondary to more immediate personal concerns, whether that be a cheating spouse, a missing girlfriend or the less-than-tender ministrations of the school bully. It’s a microcosmic view of invasion that courts the same sense of mystery and blind panic that Shyamalan tried to tap into with Signs. What would happen if an average person without the President’s ear witnessed the vanguard of an alien force without any broader context? Needless to say, Roland Emmerich would have absolutely no time for it.
It’s an admirable pursuit, and succeeds to a point. The characters, introduced gradually over the first two episodes, are engaging and their circumstances diverse enough to contribute a varied and textured narrative. But the show’s deliberately languid pace saps it of urgency and, during the multi-episode build-up, the lack of concrete information is often more frustrating than intriguing. Things begin to build momentum as the show nears its mid-point, and if the curtain pulls back still further, we may yet see Invasion reach an exciting crescendo. Thus far, however, it’s an interesting study of personal responses to crisis that succeeds in capturing the spirit of The War Of The Worlds, but not enough of its excitement.
