In a galaxy of secrets and Dark Side powers, all is not what it seems.

One hundred years before the rise of the Empire, the Jedi Order and Galactic Republic prospered for centuries without war, but something is stirring that could fracture this peace. This is the premise of Disney’s new Star Wars show, created by Russian Doll’s Leslye Headland, launching this week on Disney+ with a two-episode premiere.

For the first time in live action we get to witness the era of the Old Republic, which until now has been limited to books and comics. In truth, it’s very much like the galaxy of the prequels, but even longer ago. There’s lightsabers, a Wookiee, Neimodians, familiar phrases like ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ and ‘May the Force be with you’, all to remind us where we are, because otherwise there’s no direct linkage to the Skywalker saga.

In these opening episodes, both written by Headland, the first directed by her, we’re introduced to the main players, though first there’s a brawl where a Jedi walks into a bar (stop me if you’ve heard it) and shows us that no one is safe in this universe. All the clues suggest that the attacker is former Jedi Osha (Amandla Stenberg, The Hunger Games), and her former master Sol (Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game) is sent to bring her in after her prison ship crashes.

It’s a lively couple of opening episodes, and we’re clearly more in Obi-Wan territory than Andor, the show skewing younger with a plot and dialogue that are easy to follow. All characters clunkily explain to us what they’re doing and why, and it’s not without its charm. It just doesn’t feel that special yet and merely passes the time. Maybe it will notch up a gear in the episodes that follow?

Verdict: Fun but unremarkable family-friendly Star Wars that does exactly what it says on the tin, but little more. Acolyte? More like Star Wars-lite. 6/10

Nick Joy

The Acolyte is a refreshing look at a new piece of Star Wars – both in terms of settings and in terms of characters. It’s has (thank goodness) nothing to do with the Skywalkers and nothing to do with the Empire (Palpatine has not, somehow, returned).

Aimed squarely at the YA audience it’s exciting, colourful and absolutely structured around a weekly serial format. The Jedi are cool, doing new things with a confidence that is entirely absent in other parts of the visual bits of Star Wars.

It most strongly reminded me of the first couple of episodes of Rebels which started out the same way before gradually revealing it had deep roots and deeper ideas all along.

On that basis I’m more than willing to trust this show and see what it leads because I found the first two exciting and engaging.

There’ll be a certain kind of Star Wars viewer who regards Rogue One as the peak of the franchise who will find this colourful show too lightweight. Honestly, it sucks to be them because I can see that this show already has little flourishes that are going to get deeper with time, that are going to be looked back upon to show that The Acolyte knew where it was going right from the beginning.

Thematically it sits comfortably with the High Republic novels and it benefits from that. It’s a show about Jedi that’s not wallowing in loss or defeat or the politics of complacency. Instead it’s a little murder mystery which is, I think, going to be resolved pretty quickly in favour of the next layer of story that will, also, I suspect continue revealing more.

The leads, especially Lee Jung-jae as Master Sol, are excellent and you can feel the shape of them from these first two episodes. If the dialogue feels a little popcorny, well that’s entirely in keeping with a show that’s supposed to catch the essence of Saturday Morning adventures – in that sense is it exactly what Star Wars has always aimed to be: an adventure for everyone.

Verdict: A good start and I’m looking forward to more as I would happily have sat through hour long episodes without any boredom.

8 throwing knives out of 10

Stewart Hotston