A love triangle, a space race, a secret project, a twist from which the story begins. These are the ingredients – overall unappetizing – of The Girl and the Cosmonaut, the original Polish Netflix series from February 17 on the platform.
We can’t help but think of all the series and films about the space race that have filled the collective imagination since Trip to the moon by Georges Mélies. We then approached writing the review de The girl and the cosmonautthe serie original polish Netflix since February 17 on the platform, knowing full well that, despite the ever-evolving technologies and research, everything has already been said on the subject. However, you can still find new ways to tell it (see Interstellar). The new six-episode drama tries to combine love triangle, government conspiracy and the dream of many boys and girls nowadays. What will come out?
A girl and two (would-be) astronauts
From the very first lines, The girl and the cosmonaut (in original A girl and a cosmonaut) makes us understand what a story that runs through space together with the protagonists will be like, but which will put the latter and their relationship at the center above all. A love triangle started when they were twenty and continued even thirty years later, when Niko, chosen for a secret mission in agreement between Russia and Poland and believed dead, is found in orbit on Earth not aged a day. The rest of the world however has obviously moved on, including Martha who married Bogdan and had a daughter with him. At that point the series takes a step back and through a series of flashbacks tells the events that led the two pilots to be chosen as finalists for the mission, and Marta-Bogdan-Niko to create a real love triangle. In parallel on the temporal plane of the present / future of 2050, the serial tells the consequences of the discovery of Niko and what it will mean for the people in his life, thirty years after having believed him dead.
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Boys dreams
It’s not just personal stories that hold sway in this original Polish production for Netflix. The other aspect that intersects with the love triangle is the mystery behind the secret government mission. A series of conspiracies and plans that are gradually revealed – but quite predictable from the first episodes, as well as the dynamics of the triangle – in the course of the narrative alternations. The story that will come to light recalls in some respects Fringe, in which science and humanity merged and mixed. This is more about science and outer spaceman’s dream par excellence.
The twenty-year-old protagonists wanted their life to go into a world and, thirty years later, this has often not been the case and they have to deal with it every day. Marta dreamed of being a DJ but didn’t have clear ideas about her future, as did her friend Karolina, while the latter’s brother, Niko, and Bogdan were two close friends, promising F-16 pilots in the Navy Polish Air Force who dreamed of one day flying in space, above the clouds. A girl and a mission will forever part their ways. The part dedicated to flashbacks, also in terms of photography, plays on soft and neon colors that represent the youth full of hope of the protagonists.
Futuristic world
The part dedicated instead to the present-future is all in shades of blue and gray, cold colors that represent the daily structure to which the characters are accustomed. In fact, one aspect in which The Girl and the Cosmonaut has nothing to envy to the other major international Netflix productions is the staging and rendering of that futuristic world of the 2050s. Walls that become screens, transparent and very thin smartphones, smart homes that control the daily life and health of individuals through the system: everything seems to come out of an episode of Black Mirror.
Written by Agata Malesinska and directed by Bartek Prokopowicz, the sci-fi serial does not shine for its originality but brings home the result on a razor’s edge, albeit with some dead times or with a rhythm that is sometimes too staid that would like to express the feelings of the characters but he doesn’t quite succeed. The casting did a good job of choosing the young and adult equivalents of the protagonists: Magdalena Cielecka and Magdalena Boczarska for Marta, and Andrzej Chyra and Grzegorz Damięcki for Bogdan, together with the other performers Jakub Sasak, Vanessa Alexander, Zofia Jastrzębska, Anna Cieślak and Daria Polunina. The only one taken individually is Jędrzej Hycnar as Niko, who faces the double interpretive challenge of waking up in a world he neither recognizes nor understands.
Conclusions
At the end of the review of The Girl and the Cosmonaut we confirm that it is a series that tells a theme we have already seen and tries to revive it with a love triangle and a state secret, failing completely but proposing a realistic and well-finished futuristic world. As well as the soundtrack and the casting of the double roles, which however often overemphasize some moments and some aspects of the story.
Because we like it
- Trying to mix a love triangle with a space race.
- The story on two time planes.
- The present-future staged by the series.
What’s wrong
- Many aspects and storylines know already seen.
- The love triangle does not have the desired effect on the viewer.