2049 and a scientist in the Arctic races to stop a team of astronauts from returning home to an Earth that has suffered a mysterious global catastrophe.

Netflix’s big budget sci-fi drama is pretty grim stuff, with just the smallest sliver of hope, but then again, 2020 has been that sort of year hasn’t it, so saccharine Christmas fare might not be your appetite this holiday season.

George Clooney stars and directs, playing astronomer Augustine at the Barbeau Observatory in the Arctic Circle, dying from cancer and waiting for his mortality to catch up with him. Things become more complicated when he discovers a young girl, Iris (Caoilin Springhall) has stowed away with him and that he needs to be a responsible adult rather spending his day hitting the bottle,

Things escalate when the space craft Aether (headed up by Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo and Kyle Chandler) begins its return mission from Jupiter, having discovered a habitable moon, and Augustine needs to warn them not to return to Earth’s radioactive atmosphere. But to do so he needs to travel across the treacherous frozen terrain to reach an antenna powerful to carry the signal.

Cue various moments of high drama both on Earth and in space, and Clooney delivers some great sequences. The problem is that we’ve probably all seen Gravity, Ad Astra, Arrival and Interstellar, and what we get here is a recycling of their best moments, including a major plot twist from one without the novelty of seeing anything new.

Verdict: Solid, glossy high concept sci-fi drama with a big cast and a heart in absolutely the right place. Just a shame that its pace is off and the sense of déjà vu is greater than that of emotional involvement. 7/10