‘Constellation’ Review: Alice in Wonderspace

In “Constellation” on Apple TV+, the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace stars as Jo Ericsson, an astronaut whose time on the International Space Station takes a tragic and mysterious turn. The superbly capable Jo battles overwhelming odds to get back to Earth and to decipher why she feels so out of place once she’s there. But the real hero of the story — its emotional center and vigilant conscience — is Jo’s young daughter, a solemn girl with a significant name: Alice. To understand what’s up with her mom, she’ll have to go through the looking glass.

The uneven but seductively spooky “Constellation,” which premieres with three of its eight episodes on Wednesday, is a space adventure, mystery and family drama spun from the unstable fabric of quantum physics. People, places and events look different from episode to episode and scene to scene; when a NASA scientist tells Jo that curiosity killed the cat, he is definitely referring to the poor animal inside Schrödinger’s box.

In storytelling terms, though, the real quantum entanglement is that of straight science-fiction action with dark fairy tale. The show’s creator and writer, Peter Harness, working with the directors Michelle MacLaren, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Joseph Cedar, carries off both with aplomb, and maintains a dry tone and an appealing atmosphere of foreboding. The mechanics of the narrative, as “Constellation” shifts through its different gears, can be creaky, but the show continually draws you in.

The main action begins with a bang, as an unidentified bit of debris cripples the space station during an experiment that seeks “a new state of matter.” Across two episodes the echoes of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” are heavy as Jo, left alone in the station, deals with a cascade of problems while trying to escape in a Soyuz capsule. Where “Gravity” ended, though, “Constellation” is just getting started. The resourcefulness and sanity Jo displays in space define her for the audience, so that we stay on her side when things start to go wrong on Earth.

Jo’s memories — of names, cars, relationships — do not completely jibe with what she finds when she gets home to Sweden, and the show slides from adventure into increasingly paranoid thriller, smoothly though perhaps with more time-jumping confusion and open questions than some viewers will have patience for. It plays fair, however — by Episode 6 things begin to come clear. At which point Jo and Alice head into the dark northern woods.

And here the show shifts again, into its fairy-tale mode, with breadcrumb trails, howling winds, a seemingly magical closet and a child who carries the weight of understanding and judgment. The form of this section serves as a correlative for the strangeness of modern science — the explanation of what has happened to Jo, even though it is grounded in physics, plays out like fantasy.

Not everything in “Constellation” achieves liftoff. A parallel plot featuring Jonathan Banks of “Better Call Saul” as the former astronaut who designed the onboard experiment feels like warmed-over noir, and Banks doesn’t have his usual force. James D’Arcy can’t do much with the underwritten role of Jo’s milquetoast husband.

Rapace is solid as the hyper-rational Jo, however, and the British twins Davina and Rosie Coleman are excellent as the sad-eyed, levelheaded Alice. “Constellation” answers, or suggests answers for, most of the questions it poses, but it leaves the door open for a second season in which the looking glass will still need to be traversed.