After a fatal accident on the International Space Station, astronaut Jo Ericsson returns to Earth to discover that elements of her life have dramatically changed.

Perhaps reality is so hard to stomach these days, storytellers are increasingly drawn to the narrative possibilities of the quantum multiverse simply as a means of escape. I’ve written three of my own quantum dramas for BBC Radio over the decades, and in the last couple of years we’ve had Everything Everywhere All at Once cleaning up at the Oscars, plus numerous TV series such as The Peripheral and the French YA Parallels, and that’s before we even get into the antics of Doctor Strange and the seemingly infinite iterations of the Spider-verse.

So does Peter Harness’s Constellation add anything new to the genre? Well… yes and no… perhaps depending on which universe you happen to be in.

Without doubt this is a very watchable show. I sat down to review the first two episodes, but ended up devouring the whole series in a couple of days. So did I wholeheartedly enjoy it? Well, being something of a critical quantum particle in my own right, it’s perfectly possible for me to inhabit two opposing states at the same time.

The first two parts are gripping, whichever universe you’re in. Jo (Noomi Rapace, looking constantly anxious) finds herself battling to survive a fatal accident on board a convincingly rendered International Space Station. This is edge of the seat stuff – part adventure, part ghost story. In the middle of all this kerfuffle, a grizzled physicist and veteran of the Apollo program, Henry Caldera (the brilliant Jonathan Banks at his absolute grizzliest) is desperate for Jo to retrieve his Cold Atomic Laboratory (basically a quantum thermos flask) and bring it safely to Earth. Of course, the savvy sci-fi buff knows full well that where quantum thermoses go, multiverses are sure to follow, and so we’re not at all surprised when Jo starts noticing increasingly significant differences in the life she has returned to, especially with reference to her daughter Alice (played capably for reasons that soon become obvious, by talented twin sisters Rosie and Davina Coleman). And of course, because she is called Alice, she has to have a toy rabbit and spends a good deal of time looking into mirrors with people quoting Lewis Carroll at her.

To say any more about the plot would be to spoil it, but of course there is a good deal of convoluted comings-and-goings across the multiversal divide – so convoluted, that in one episode I have to admit I completely lost track for about half an hour.

At its best, Constellation works on an emotional level, exploring ideas around identity and psychosis; and, even more powerfully, in the case of Jonathan Banks’s character, survivor guilt and the pain of a life not lived.

At its weakest, the series gets tangled up in its blurry dabblings with quantum physics, and its own rules of engagement; rules which are frustratingly inconsistent, to the point where they become distracting. I spent far too much time thinking: ‘But surely they wouldn’t…?’ ‘Couldn’t they just…?’ ‘How come she can do x but she can’t do y?’ or even ‘No! That’s just cheating!’

Three quantum dramas of my own down the line, I’ve concluded that one should either use the idea simply as a metaphor, or, if you are going to suggest some kind of scientific verité, then you need to pay careful attention to the logistical nuts and bolts.

Quibbling over detail is a critically petty cul-de-sac, but I did wonder why a Nobel prize-winning physicist didn’t know how to use the screen-grab facility on his computer; or why no one seemed to have phone-tracking technology; or why the launchpad fire that killed astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White had been transposed from Apollo 1 to the successful Apollo 9 mission, when all the other historical details had been so accurately researched; or the somewhat sketchy understanding of the functionality of anti-psychotic medication… I could go on for a while. Yes, it may be petty, but there were too many to ignore – especially in the later episodes which I won’t list here for fear of spoilers. I found myself wishing a little more care had been taken. Although, perhaps the real advantage of the multiverse for a writer, is that you never have to say you’re sorry.

Verdict: If you can put all that aside, the emotional narrative is absorbing, and you, like me, will be gripped by the amazing Jonathan Banks whose story is actually the stronger of the two strands, partly because his is the only character with something to gain. Banks is an actor who can do no wrong, whatever universe he inhabits. He makes Constellation’s eight-episode journey worthwhile. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com