Space Oddity

Noomi Rapace's astronaut has an uneasy homecoming in Constellation 

- IAN BERRIMAN

IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE WE heard from Peter Harness, the writer behind the TV adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and 2019’s period take on The War Of The Worlds (plus four Doctor Who episodes for Peter Capaldi). Now he’s back, with an original eight-part series.

Described as a “conspiracy-based psychological thriller”, Constellation centres on Jo, a Swedish astronaut who returns to Earth after surviving a disaster on the International Space Station, only to find that “key pieces of her life seem to be missing”.

Harness got involved after the producers asked if he’d be interested in writing something related to astronauts coming home. “It felt like it enabled a lot of different things that I was interested in to collide with each other,” he tells Red Alert. “I’m interested in the history of the space program, where it’s at, and where it’s likely to be. And I’m also interested in the conspiracy theories.”

By this he doesn’t mean the “question” of whether the Apollo moon landings were faked (no, tinfoil enthusiasts, they weren’t). “There’s a number of weird stories and suggestions of things that might have gone differently, and slightly spooky stories about space. I collided that with an interest in general weirdness and horror to see whether there was a world where one thing could explain the other, and they could bounce off each other.”