In a follow-up to the cult 1976 film starring David Bowie, a disorientated alien arrives on Earth to pursue a mysterious mission.

As a sci-fi hungry teenager in the 1970s I was strangely obsessed with Nicolas Roeg’s movie of Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel, The Man Who Fell To Earth. I saw it three times at the Harlow Odeon. I say ‘strangely’ obsessed because, to be brutally honest, I never actually thought it was a very good film. David Bowie, musical god though he may have been, was (don’t hate me) never up to much as an actor, especially not in a bald wig and a Lycra onesie. Similarly, Roeg a mystical genius on a good day, did have a tendency to wander off into indulgence and incoherence when the creative weather wasn’t quite so fine.

Spool forward forty-six years, and Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman have picked up the narrative baton with a ten-part series for Showtime starring the great Chiwetel Ejiofor and the equally charismatic Naomie Harris bringing A-list acting talent to this new iteration of the story.

In this season opener, Hallo Spaceboy (in a nice touch, all ten episodes are named after Bowie tracks), Ejiofor materialises naked, Terminator style, in the middle of New Mexico having to learn the language, customs, mores of Earth as fast as he can in order to move onto the next phase of his mysterious ‘mission’. This opening act includes a lot of quite familiar ‘alien-inadequately-briefed’ humour which isn’t exactly original (think Resident Alien, but with a social realist, arthouse schtick). Fortunately, it’s extremely well crafted, the script is tight, and once Naomie Harris arrives on the scene as a fusion scientist extremely down on her luck, the show fizzes with the two stars’ screen chemistry.

We’re also happy to ride along with the more familiar ‘naïve alien’ tropes because it’s framed as a flashback. We know from the opening sequence that Faraday (Ejiofor) will become a person of global significance later in the series.

We also know, in an acknowledgement of the Tevis/Roeg source material, that Faraday isn’t the first of his species to visit our planet, so if you haven’t seen the original movie, then I suggest it might add to your enjoyment to take a peek before embarking on the series.

Verdict: This is a solid, enjoyable season opener, setting up lots of questions with great economy, a lightness of tonal touch and quality production values. Some story beats are a little too well trodden but I’m hopeful it will soon start to plough more of its own furrow. 8/10

Martin Jameson