Based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel, Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 cult classic The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of the boldest, most profound, and singular cinematic achievements of the sci-fi genre. Starring David Bowie as an alien who arrives on Earth seeking to bring water back to his parched home planet, the ambitious, richly meditative work was both ahead of its time and the type of film that could only have been made in the ’70s.
Favoring a safer, more audience-friendly approach to the material, Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman’s new serial adaptation isn’t without its charms, namely Chiwetel Ejiofor’s funny and heartfelt interpretation of the titular figure. But absent of the original film’s pensive, oddly seductive magnetism and Roeg’s experimental flourishes, Showtime’s The Man Who Fell to Earth feels frustratingly earthbound. Where’s a space oddity when you need one?
With a cold open set an unspecified number of years in the future, The Man Who Fell to Earth introduces us to our unearthly hero, Faraday (Ejiofor), as a Steve Jobs-like tech mogul who speaks freely about living as an extraterrestrial. The series makes clear from the jump that it will venture away from the somber events of its source material. Indeed, this fish-out-of-water tale is meant to be cheerful, more Amblin-esque, and thus more conventionally rousing.
As the series flashes back to follow Faraday’s arrival on Earth, where he expectedly confuses and alarms people with his unbecoming behavior, including yelling obscenities to get whatever he wants or needs, The Man Who Fell to Earth feels as far from Roeg’s impressionistic feature as you can imagine, at times suggesting an R-rated Mork & Mindy. This is especially evident when Naomie Harris’s Justin Falls, a down-on-her-luck single mom who was once a nuclear fusion scholar but now cleans up toxic waste in desert-based construction sites, becomes Faraday’s unwitting benefactor and mentor. Their oddball dynamic, particularly when they meet in the first episode, is endearing but disappointingly rote.
As the story expands, The Man Who Fell to Earth becomes an environmentalist call to action, which injects the series with what feels like a more modern purpose. It also speaks to the immigrant experience, the ever-present dangers of capitalism, and America’s failing healthcare system, among other timely hot topics. But while all of those issues are certainly worthy of exploration, the show’s distillation of its themes is neither subtle nor subversive. The writers seem to be aiming for something deeply affecting in an attempt to appeal to a wide audience, but they fail to recognize the key to the power of Tevis’s story: its peculiarity.
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