In Night Sky, Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons deliver acting masterclass as an ageing couple trying to repurpose life

You realise how much of onscreen science fiction is dominated by youth when you see Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons, two Oscar-winning veterans at the peak of their powers, introducing an exquisite slowness to the world of Night Sky, the Amazon series they headline. Released on Amazon Prime Video yesterday (20 May), Night Sky’s eight-episode first season is a slow-burning story about a septuagenarian couple, Franklin and Irene York (Simmons and Spacek, respectively), who discover a portal to an alien planet’s observatory in their shed (helpfully placed behind a sign that says ‘to the stars’) and decide to keep the secret to themselves; until one day Irene discovers a bleeding young man called Jude (Chai Hansen) in the observatory.    

As the show progresses, and especially in its second half, the parallel story of an Argentine woman named Stella (Julieta Zylberberg) and her daughter Toni (Rocio Hernandez) becomes entwined with the Yorks’ — Stella guards a similar portal and is grooming her daughter to become part of a mysterious cult that their family has dedicated their lives to. This same cult appears to be connected to the alien planet that the Yorks travel to every now and then (850-odd times, as Franklin mentions during the first episode in an offhand way).  

There really are two shows within Night Sky. The first is the poignant, wistful story of a couple who’s been married for 50-plus years. Their adult son’s suicide nearly two decades ago still weighs heavily upon the soul, and they now have to negotiate what seems to be the last few years they have together. Spacek and Simmons put on an acting masterclass in this section. Every glance they exchange, every hand gesture, every exasperated sigh conveys the life they’ve led together. When Franklin is rubbing Irene’s feet on a couch and making silly little jokes about their bodily frailties, it’s tough not to feel a wave of affection for these characters. Although we do have some flashback sequences with younger actors playing Irene and Franklin, these sepia-tinted scenes feel extraneous, almost — Spacek and Simmons are that good.  

The second show within Night Sky is currently the weaker one, but shows a lot of promise by the end of this season (and may yet become something special in the next). This is the show involving a large, elaborate, overarching mystery involving space cults, and hereditary assassins and a whole lot of cliffhangers and sci-fi exposition. Basically, it’s Lost during that show’s weaker moments (although Franklin and Irene resemble nothing more than aged versions of Rose and Bernard, arguably the best part of Lost). The pace picks up dramatically in the seventh and eighth episodes of the season, however, and sets thing up nicely for a more entertaining exploration of the alien planet in Season Two.  

Night Sky works best when it’s not trying too hard to link the physical mysteries of the alien planet with the metaphysical dilemmas of Franklin and Irene’s ageing.

As it is, the planet’s beautiful but barren landscape encapsulates the ennui of the Yorks’ lives, as well as the profound grief they feel at their son’s passing. For Irene, specially, the mystery of the planet becomes a reason to keep living, almost. “This is our mystery to solve,” she tells Franklin in a moving scene from the first episode, explaining why she doesn’t want to share this secret from the world.  

Of course, Jude’s arrival and the events that unfold due to his deceptions scupper Irene’s desire to keep the planet to herself. There are themes of faith and redemption in this subplot — as we see Jude ripping pieces of alien super-tech from his body, it becomes clear that he is seen as traitor (Jude=Judas) by the ‘holy assassins’ in pursuit of him. This is also in line with Amazon’s other great science fiction series of 2022 — Outer Range, which also has an agreeable blend of family drama and sci-fi hijinks, and is really a story about faith and adversity and resilience.  

There are some nifty little meta-touches along the way, moments that reward the viewer’s undivided attention. Irene, a former English teacher, reads from The Count of Monte Cristo to a bedridden Jude. “It’s got everything: escape, revenge, deception,” Irene says approvingly. This is as true for the Dumas novel as it is for Night Sky itself. Jude himself embodies the ‘prisoner with a tragic/mysterious past’ trope that’s such a big part of The Count of Monte Cristo.  

In the final equation, this first season does more than enough to keep viewers absorbed, although the runtime could have easily been trimmed to six episodes instead of eight. Led by towering performances by its A-list leads, Night Sky overcomes a sluggish, exposition-heavy second act to finish strongly — and leave us wanting more.                    

Night Sky is streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

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