A star-studded cast — including Academy Award winners Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons — leads Amazon’s new series Night Sky (originally called Lightyears, which was destined to be changed, all things considered). A new trailer for the series, created by Holden Miller and showrun by Daniel C. Connolly, gives us a good look at this Prime Video collaboration with Legendary Pictures.
The trailer shows off some halfway decent CGI and special effects as two retirees, Irene (Spacek) and Franklin (Simmons), enjoy an alien teleporter they’ve found in their backyard that transports them from their rural home to a strange bubble on another planet. It’s not clear where in the universe they’ve been sent, but it’s safe, and it’s beautiful. There’s a rather sweet image of Irene and Franklin holding hands as if they were sitting on their front porch, except instead of watching their front yard they have a front-row view of the universe unfolding.
I would be satisfied with a low-stakes cosy mystery of these two trying to figure out what’s going on, but Amazon likes it when things explode and guns go off, so there’s of course a massive conspiracy around this science-fiction device, and we get a frantic series of cuts of people loading glocks and jumping in and out of vans. A stranger shows up in the middle of Irene and Franklin’s property and more and more mysteries about their chamber come to light.
This production had a bit of turnover before the final casting; originally Ed O’Niell (Modern Family) was set to star as Franklin, but I’m rather pleased with Simmon’s showing in the trailer, which has him as a charismatic and warm husband opposite the intense and deliberate Spacek.
All eight episodes of Night Sky arrive May 20 on Prime Video.
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Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.