The four friends are scattered across parallel universes and different time frames. Is there any way for them to find their way home and be reunited as they were?

I’m feeling slightly regretful. A week ago, in reviewing the season openers for Parallels, the Disney+ French Teen Sci-Fi drama, this reviewer may have sounded a little as if I were damning with faint praise. It appeared, at first contact, to be an amiable, well crafted, if familiar multiverse story.

I would like to amend that opinion with immediate effect. Having reached the heart of the series, episodes 3 and 4 take the narrative into fresher, and much darker territory, exploring some genuinely interesting narrative ideas as the chance to skip time, or occupy alternative realities becomes a metaphor for the legacy of adolescent anger, guilt and resentment. To expand much further on this would be to venture into spoiler territory, and the enjoyment comes from the surprising way the pieces are thrown into the quantum air and allowed to fall, and the consequences played out, especially as we discover that the particle collider has done more to our heroes than simply cast them to the multiverse winds.

Verdict: I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the final act won’t disappoint, but I’m increasingly impressed by this European take on a classic genre narrative. 8/10

Martin Jameson