Why Sense8 is like noth­ing else on TV right now

There is a way to watch Sense8, and that is to live it. Take breaks, do any­thing nec­es­sary for sur­vival or return to the real world when it beck­ons, but dive straight back in when you can. Don’t let your mind wan­der (not that it will be able to), keep your heart rac­ing and body on its lyri­cal but pound­ing wave­length. Let it inhab­it you. Indulge in the whole-song mon­tages, and be swept up by its unri­valled abil­i­ty to pro­duce the most irre­sistible storm of empathy.

Get lost in the scale, the loud and colour­ful land­marks from all cor­ners of the world whizzing around you and pho­tographed with such a majesty you’ll feel like imme­di­ate­ly book­ing a world tour. The com­pul­sion to trav­el the world, explor­ing its won­ders and secrets, makes an inter­est­ing point for the show, for it’s not to see what they see. Sense8 is about life beyond the tourist land­marks, the every­day tragedies and chal­lenges com­pris­ing life, and the ephemer­al com­mon­al­i­ties that bind everyone.

In that sense, the world tour the show wants you to take is not just to see what they see, but feel what they feel. The aim of big-bud­get tele­vi­sion in this era of unprece­dent­ed com­pe­ti­tion and scale is to build a world that lives, breathes, and feels bound­less to explore over many hours. There has to be streets, hous­es with peo­ple fill­ing them, a sense that a view­er could walk into one at any giv­en moment and into a dif­fer­ent life, anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty full of rich his­to­ry. Most shows set out to cre­ate a world, but Sense8 doesn’t – it just pulls you into the mar­vel­lous, com­pli­cat­ed one around you and asks you to take a leap of faith.

For the unac­quaint­ed, a map for the land. The plot isn’t over­ly com­pli­cat­ed, at times it’s shock­ing­ly relaxed for an era of shrink­ing episode orders and shows that are thank­ful­ly divest­ing them­selves of the dead space the 22 episode stan­dard had. The first sea­son is decep­tive­ly easy to explain. Eight peo­ple around the world, pre­vi­ous­ly strangers who like­ly wouldn’t have made eye con­tact had they some­how impos­si­bly crossed paths, become tele­path­i­cal­ly connected.

But beyond being able to speak and trav­el to each oth­er, their con­nec­tion is much more inti­mate and ephemer­al – they’re able to inhab­it the oth­er per­son, expe­ri­enc­ing not only every thought and feel­ing, every piece of per­son­al his­to­ry that influ­ences it. It’s not just a sim­ple mat­ter of know­ing what’s going on, it’s absolute­ly every­thing hap­pen­ing in the back­ground too, whether that’s a mem­o­ry of a parade attend­ed as a child or the birth of a younger sibling.

Each of the group of Sen­sates (known as a clus­ter) have their own bag­gage when going through this mirac­u­lous change. Kala, a chemist from India, is strug­gling with famil­ial con­ven­tion against what she desires. Lito, a famous action star in Mex­i­co, is clos­et­ed. Nomi, a hack­er in San Fran­cis­co, faces big­otry from both her fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty. Will is a Chica­go police­man haunt­ed by some­thing he expe­ri­enced as a child, sim­i­lar to career crim­i­nal Wolf­gang in Berlin, and Nairo­bi bus dri­ver Capheus. Sun, eldest child of the head of a pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tion, strug­gles with sex­ism; and Riley, a DJ from Ice­land, is run­ning away from shat­ter­ing trauma.

If it sounds like a large-scale exper­i­ment in rad­i­cal empa­thy, that assess­ment is spot-on. Inclu­sion is miss­ing from all of the char­ac­ters’ lives in dif­fer­ent ways, lone­li­ness all affects them in some way and the sud­den appear­ance of sev­en oth­er coun­ter­parts is ini­tial­ly con­fus­ing (Kala, a devout Hin­du, thinks it’s the gods play­ing tricks on her) before being comforting.

In this way, the relaxed pace of the pro­ceed­ings in sea­son one punc­tu­at­ed by orgies and dance scenes is not dead space but time to cre­ate those rela­tion­ships, the con­nec­tions need­ed for the ulti­mate­ly qui­eter sec­ond sea­son (cur­rent­ly on Net­flix). The ques­tions swirling around the Sen­sates dis­cov­er­ing and explor­ing their iden­ti­ties formed the first twelve out­ings, jour­ney­ing dream­i­ly and dis­be­liev­ing­ly from Lon­don to Nairo­bi to Seoul in a sin­gle scene and unfurl­ing the tapes­try for the show to build itself on. It was only asked what exact­ly had hap­pened, that ques­tion get­ting larg­er and larg­er as there were more chas­es and musi­cal mon­tages and orgies pil­ing on top of each oth­er, ask­ing more ques­tions than answering.

In that sense, sea­son two is qui­eter. There’s still the rad­i­cal exhi­bi­tions of emo­tion, the indul­gent whole-song stretch­es and extend­ed roman­tic inter­ludes that oth­er shows would divest for being not cru­cial to advanc­ing plot. Sea­son two leaves ques­tions, the end­ing the largest of them all, but answers more. There’s the how and the why to bal­ance the emo­tion and the intel­lect, the mechan­ics with the uncon­trol­lable that makes the momen­tum more insistent.

But if there was a crit­i­cism lev­elled at the show in sea­son one that it’s even more intent on rec­ti­fy­ing in sea­son two, it’s what some per­ceived as touristy voyeurism. The show’s wide-eyed opti­mism at the poten­tial for con­nec­tiv­i­ty was per­ceived to be short-sight­ed and biased, ulti­mate­ly gloss­ing over intri­ca­cies that define indi­vid­u­als and cul­tures. But in order for that sort of voyeurism to exist there has to be some air of supe­ri­or­i­ty, some sort of dis­tance exert­ed between view­er (and hence, Sen­sate) and the world.

That sim­ply doesn’t exist here. When the Wachowskis (this sea­son, only Lana is at the helm) point their cin­e­mat­ic lens at the world, it is over­whelm­ing. Net­flix con­tent most­ly feels like some­thing that could be achieved on cable tele­vi­sion with a bal­looned bud­get, not real­ly con­sid­er­ing what it means to make a glob­al show. Sense8, how­ev­er, feels stag­ger­ing­ly glob­al in a way that wouldn’t sur­vive on some­thing con­strained by geography.

Oth­er shows would get caught up in self impor­tance, the decep­tive enor­mi­ty of uni­ty. How­ev­er, Sense8 realis­es the fun­da­men­tal – uni­ty is not a grand or rad­i­cal idea and this is not the first cul­tur­al prod­uct to make a case for it, nor does it need an imag­ined uni­verse. It’s some­thing that can be achieved by any­one. While the show, which filmed on every con­tent except­ing Antarc­ti­ca and Aus­tralia in an eight month-long shoot for sea­son two, feels stag­ger­ing in scale, what feels the most epic about it is the sim­plest of things – the feel­ing of being alive. Sense8 rarely offers a more vis­cer­al rush than when it is not about fight­ing and chas­ing, but sim­ply talk­ing and dreaming.

Sea­son two reveals that the Sen­sates are anoth­er species, with more evolved instincts than Homo sapi­ens that are evi­dent in their excep­tion­al abil­i­ties, but what it does with this devel­op­ment no mat­ter the small way in which it does it is the most sur­pris­ing. Riley, on the run, meets her dad at a café in Ams­ter­dam to pick up some sup­plies. He doesn’t know what has hap­pened to his daugh­ter, the mirac­u­lous con­nec­tion she instant­ly obtained with strangers from around the world. How­ev­er, he can imme­di­ate­ly tell some­thing is wrong, and tries to coax it out of her to no avail. Why? Because he knows Riley so inti­mate­ly, that he doesn’t need to pos­sess abil­i­ties dif­fer­ent from you or me to tell some­thing is amiss.

It’s a moment of decep­tive sim­plic­i­ty, and one that defines what makes the show so emi­nent­ly love­able. One doesn’t need to be a Sen­sate to detect emo­tion, to know the mem­o­ries that lurk behind thoughts and actions that forge deep empa­thet­ic bonds across the impos­si­ble. No, one needs to just sit, relax, and talk. The Sen­sates are not supe­ri­or to humans, pure­ly more attuned. Even­tu­al­ly, you will feel what they feel. All you need to do is take the first step. Walk into the com­pli­cat­ed world around you, and the rest will unfurl before your eyes.