Netflix and Sense8

Streaming this series properly caused me to fall in love with it.

Last week I finally signed up to Netflix. I’d loved enough of their content to have been considering it a while, and although I’m not sure what made me cave, I haven’t yet regretted it. One of the motivations was wanting to trick myself into being productive: I have a mobile phone contract I’ve been getting around to cancelling since June, and since Netflix starts billing you after a month, spending money on one thing too many is my way of setting a deadline for myself. That’s my excuse, at least.

I watched Sense8 on its release and didn’t care for it—somehow, it ended up being the series I fell asleep to—but joining Netflix prompted me to give it another chance, and I’ve quickly fallen in love with it. I’m noticing that Netflix is changing how I watch things: paying a subscription and getting shows in high definition has made television feel more like something I’m investing in, and less like something I do to procrastinate, and I’m paying more attention to whatever I watch.

A series like Sense8 wouldn’t air on network television, and it’s a testament to how Netflix is already changing the way TV is made. The first season weaves together eight storylines in nine locales around the world, each filmed on location, and there are some thirty-odd characters. Unlike other ensemble shows, each episode is divided between all of the leads, so the drama only works a serial: you have to commit to a few episode before the narrative pace really picks up.

All the Wachowskis’ collaborators contribute to Sense8, with Tom Tykwer (Lola rennt, Cloud Atlas) on composing and directing duties. Created with J. Michael Straczynski, the series, like Babylon 5, takes scifi new places, with explorations of politics, gender, sexuality and religion. There’s a little too much of the Wachowskis’ trademark woo—doctors here are monsters of intolerant western science, and deepities (‘Impossibility is a kiss away from reality’) come thick and fast—but in the long run, it’s forgiveable.

You’d think that of all the sensates, my favourite would be Nomi, the techie blogger from San Francisco whose girlfriend has bisexual hair. Nomi is the one I’d be likeliest to know, but to my surprise, I relate the strongest to Wolfgang, the stoic criminal from Berlin. Of the eight leads, Wolfgang interacts least with the others, and we learn he didn’t grow up around kindness; but he knows who he is, and saves the day when reckless self-destructiveness is the only way out. If I had a superpower, that might be it.