For anybody with functioning eyes that enjoys any of the following genres: action, crime, sci-fi, romance or drama, you’ll probably find something to like about Sense8.
Sense8 is a Netflix TV show that came out in 2015 (season 1), mid-way through what was a really rough year for me because I was away from my family and life on exchange in France, and it was a complete refuge from all the stuff I had going on at the time. It follows the stories of eight characters in various places around the world that are all mentally connected. (There’s the sci-fi). In order to not spoil what is a really complex plot, instead of talking about it I’m just going to list off some of the reasons that you could have to love this show
- You get not one, but EIGHT main characters to love
- They can’t really be summed up in single sentences, but i’ll try:
- A bus driver in Nairobi trying to save money to treat his mother who has AIDS
- The daughter of a powerful Korean businessman who is a rising underground kickboxing champion
- A trans woman “hacktivist” living with her girlfriend after being estranged from her parents
- A devout hindu pharmacist engaged in a political match to a man who’s father sees religion as what’s holding back the country
- An Icelandic DJ living and performing in London to escape her past
- A lockpick/safe cracker in Berlin who’s a champ but also an around shady dude
- A closeted gay actor in Mexico with his boyfriend and his actress friend/beard
- A cop in chicago living under the weight of an unsolved murder in his past and his ex-cop father’s alcoholism
- They are a really diverse bunch of people from a bunch of really cool locations (Nairobi, Seoul, San Fransisco, Mumbai, London, Berlin, Reykjavik, Mexico City, Chicago…)
- Each of the scenes are actually filmed on location
- You get to look into how different the lives of these people are and what kind of issues they face (besides the sci-fi related ones) like the AIDS crisis in africa, political corruption, sexism, PTSD, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people etc…
- The cinematography is really, really pretty
- Like so many sweeping shots of the most amazing places
- A lot of really kickass fight scenes
- Some interesting ideas about the future of the human race
- All of the characters speak their own language, and so each of the actors has the respective accent and style of speech that people from their countries typically have (which I thought was super cool)
- Cool soundtrack
There’s currently two seasons of this show available on Netflix (the second I binged in about a week whilst cutting out all those table numbers for ball). I would wholeheartedly recommend this show to literally anyone, but I do warn you that there are a number of somewhat adult scenes (if sex scenes aren’t your thing maybe skip this one out). There is also some drug usage in it so if that’s not your thang…
Sense8 really gets so much right in terms of complexity, diversity, and drawing in the audience, and if you’re looking to procrastinate this is definitely a good way to do it.
