Apple: “Constellation” series: Subtle horror in space

Actually, the astronaut and scientist Jo (Noomi Rapace) can’t play the piano at all. But when she returns to Earth from the ISS, there is suddenly a piano in her living room where there used to be a stereo system, and to her amazement she can sight-read Rachmaninoff. The family car is blue instead of red, and a friend suddenly has a different name. Does Jo suffer from post-traumatic disorder, which can occur in astronauts after space travel? Is there something wrong with her memory, is she even developing psychosis – or does it have something to do with a quantum experiment that was carried out on the ISS and led to a serious accident in which her colleague Paul (William Catlett) died?

The eight-part Apple TV+ series “Constellation,” which was almost entirely shot in Germany, is hard to beat in terms of excitement. The scientific background to the story is very complex. Can two connected parts exist in different places? This fundamental question of quantum physics is staged in this mixture of psychological thriller, science fiction and family drama with a solid dash of horror as an extremely densely atmospheric series.

Jo soon realizes that she must have ended up in another reality or dimension. The series does not offer a bland scientific fiction derivation for this assumption, but rather indulges in various dramaturgically cleverly interspersed hints and thus increases the tension enormously. The complicated connections between these interdimensional worlds only gradually become clear to the viewer. For the astronaut Jo, her new reality becomes more and more of a nightmare and she ends up in danger of ending up in a psychiatric hospital.

Is Jo’s daughter Alice (Rosie Coleman) really her child? She was said to be having an affair with her ESA superior Frederic (Julian Looman) and was on the verge of separating from her husband Magnus (James D’Arcy). Can this be? In addition, she doesn’t remember the resolute head of the Russian space agency, Irena (Barbara Sukova), with whom she suddenly has a lot to do – and what role does the American scientist Henry (Jonathan Banks), who leads the quantum physics experiment, play?

“Constellation” features a European star cast of great actors who fight their way through the eerie silence of the ISS space station, the snowy landscapes of Sweden, but also through the desert-like steppes of Baikonur and the administrative buildings of NASA and ESA. It’s about jealousies, love dramas, failed existences, the history of space travel, a very sensitively staged and plot-driven mother-child relationship and quantum-dimensional cracks in our world. This could all come across as very trying and, especially when it comes to family history, rather corny, but it doesn’t.

»Constellation« is carried over long stretches by a subtle, psychological horror, which is hardly created through spectacular images, but rather through the extremely skilful dramaturgical narrative. The series lives primarily from the good actors and from the different narrative strands, which sometimes jump back and forth between dimensions, which demands attention from the viewer. But with the wonderfully well-composed suspense, it’s not difficult. Because until the very end it remains unclear what the resolution of this sometimes disturbing science fiction story is, which is very much in line with the trend of science fiction, which is becoming increasingly popular in films and series such as “The Martian”, “The Silent Sea” and “Stowaway”. oriented towards current space travel.

Available on Apple TV+