Game of Thrones star Lena Headey makes a triumphant return to genre TV
Huge advances in CGI have, in theory, unlocked boundless creative freedom for scifi and fantasy shows – if a writer can imagine it you can get it on screen. Though,in practice, that potential has been tempered by late stage capitalism and its propensity to devalue everything that doesn’t throw a 600% return up to a bunch of vampiric ghouls who lack the basic human capacity for joy.
The upshot of this is that the genre TV boom of the nineties, encompassing everything from Star Trek to The X Files, is very much a thing of the past. The current economics of television rarely (never) account for large ensembles, 26 episodes per season, and an art budget that can stretch to more than one set. Hugh Howey’s acclaimed short-story collection Beacon 23, then, must seem like a gift from heaven for the producers of its MGM+ adaptation.
This is the story of a space lighthouse and its various keepers, whose tenures span a couple of centuries and are intertwined in a number of ways. Primarily, we are concerned with the interplay between street-smart corporate saboteur Aster (Headey) and troubled soldier Halan (played with deft versatility by Homecoming’s Stephan James). The pair’s motivations and reasons for being on Beacon 23 in the first place are all wrapped up in this show’s neatly unravelling mystery box, which batters along at such a healthy pace that in the space of each of the first three 50 minute episodes, your impression of them and knowledge of how they fit into this universe changes vastly.