Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has come up with a typically bold, uncompromising premise for this epic drama series: every single character in it is blind. It’s set in a distant future version of earth, when, after some kind of apocalyptic global catastrophe, the remnants of humanity that survive have all lost the sense of sight. They’ve also regressed to a kind of pre-industrial tribal existence, where witchfinders stalk communities looking for evidence of heretics who can see.
Jason Momoa is Baba Voss, a formidable warrior whose partner (Hera Hilmar) gives birth to twins, rumoured to have the power of sight, while he’s out defending his tribe from attack by religious cultists, led by eccentric Queen Kane (Sylvia Hoeks). Directed by Francis Lawrence, of Hunger Games fame, the series has a certain world-building grandeur to it, with a Mad Max meets Game Of Thrones vibe, but with Knight’s singular fondness for genre disruption. At one point in the first episode, the action stops so the Queen can indulge in some ritual masturbation. Classic Knight.
If you can also buy the idea that the characters’ blindness somehow does not hinder them from engaging in particularly complex fighting manoeuvres, then you’ll probably go along with the strangeness of the whole piece. Knight’s vision is pleasingly off-kilter for such a big-budget show, and it’s well worth sticking with.