Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Mickey Sumner, Alison Wright, Sean Bean, Lena Hall, Iddo Goldberg, Kate McGuinness, Susan Park, Sam Otto, Sheila Vand, Roberto Urbino, Mike O’ Malley. Annalise Basso, Jaylin Fletcher, Steven Ogg, Rowan Blanchard, Chelsea Harris, Archie Panjab, Clark Gregg, Michael Aronov, Happy Anderson, Kerry O’ Malley, Timothy V. Murphy, Aaron Glenane, William Stanford Davis, Vincent Gale, Karin Konoval, Tom Lipinski.

A microcosm of the human race on show, all the fears of extinction, all the threat of an existence as one would expect when the rich and influential are forced by circumstance to live alongside the poor and the disposed at the end of the world, a megalomaniac whose vision has become a nightmare, and a murder mystery to solve, on paper the television series adaptation of Snowpiercer has it all, and with a cast that includes Sean Bean, Jennifer Connelly, Mike O’Malley, and Daveed Diggs at its core, it arguably should have been one of the most exhilarating series of the last twenty years…instead it’s gravitas found a way to be popped like a thin, overstretched balloon part way through and really only regained its semblance of shape in its fourth and final series.

The premise of Snowpiercer is sound, it has an exuberance of promise, and it deals with what could be in the future with scientific understanding, if at times a little overwhelming for the science fiction novices.

A world plunged into a perpetual frozen wasteland, where temperatures have fallen to a point where to be outside for even a second can cause instant death, and within this cold, unsympathetic Hell on Earth, a train, almost implausibly long, carries the remaining and last hopes of humanity, and with it the sense of George Orwell’s dystopian nightmares that show the bitterness of the haves and have nots in Animal Farm and 1984 is raised and battled with as the staple of such programmes, murder, survival, exploitation, and class are dealt with savagery and the sense of distance supplied by having the only thing keeping them alive perpetually moving.

It is in keeping with such a thematic show that the heavyweight acting required is shown off with creative endeavour and a balance that is worthy of the casting; and yet this alone does not arrest the feeling of inertia, of stagnancy part way through the four series, where talk becomes a fundamental driving point, but just for the sake of it, there is no sense of heightened pulse pushing the narrative, just a constant battle of wits between the two main parties on  board and their supporters.

This comes mostly from the lack of time for Jennifer Connelly as she is allowed to drift, as the story dictates into not only the background, but for periods completely out of the storyline as her character is filtered out to pursue the objectives that cannot be shown on screen, and whilst this gives other actors the momentum to shine, not least Mike O’Malley as Sam Roache, Mickey Sumner as Bess Till, Katie McGuinness as Josie Wellstead, and Iddo Goldberg as Bennett Knox, who all carry their parts with enough residual anger to make their characters more intense and focused as their own particular storylines are played out.

Snowpiercer is well worth delving into a television story, it just should have been one series less in all honesty.

Ian D. Hall