Advertisement

REVIEW: Tonight’s ‘Defying Gravity’ has shaky (but promising) launch

Share via

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Television critic Robert Lloyd, writing in the Los Angeles Times, says that he ‘wouldn’t warn you away’ from the premiere tonight of the new ABC show ‘Defying Gravity,’ but he notes that many of the characters are ‘flat or opaque.’ Here’s an excerpt from his review:

Ron Livingston, from ‘Office Space’ and ‘Band of Brothers,’ leaves Earth this weekend in Defying Gravity,” a sci-fi series premiering Sunday on ABC. I will not be the only observer to remark on its coincidental superficial resemblance to ‘Virtuality,’ the pilot by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor (‘Battlestar Galactica’) that Fox recently ran as a one-off TV movie. Each is set around a near-future space mission that confines its characters -- some with prior issues and entanglements -- in a relatively small space; in each, a mysterious force guides events; and each uses TV broadcasts back home as a narrative device.

Advertisement

Still, the basics of the tale -- the haunted spaceship story, broadly -- have been rattling around for quite a while. The more productive comparison might be to ‘Lost,’ where a small group of people are stuck out in the middle of nowhere, the unwitting playthings of some greater intelligence, or force, or fate. And there are lots of flashbacks too.

Livingston, an actor of attractive, sometimes seedy solidity -- he’s like a less jolly Tom Hanks -- plays Maddux Donner, who 10 years before the main action was forced to abandon two other astronauts on the surface of Mars ...

THERE’S MORE, READ THE REST

Advertisement

-- Robert Lloyd

Find ‘Lost’ on our sister blog Show Tracker

‘Lost’ producers vow ‘everything that matters will be answered’

Getting ‘Lost’ in the music

Advertisement

‘Lost’ star Michael Emerson: What you didn’t know

Robert Lloyd: ‘Lost’ like a dinner guest who ‘talks nonsense’

Advertisement