On February 17, Netflix presented to the audience another serial novelty – the science fiction melodrama “The Girl and the Cosmonaut”. This is a project of Polish production, which has 6 episodes. In the review below, we know how well our friendly neighbors managed to implement this project.

“The Girl and the Cosmonaut” / Dziewczyna i kosmonauta

Genre melodrama, science fiction
Director Bartos Prokopovich
In roles Vanessa Oleksandr, Andrzej Khytsnar, Jakub Sasak, Magdalena Cheletska, Darya Polunina
Premiere Netflix
Graduation year 2023
Site IMDb

2022 year. An elegant woman with a scythe a la Yulia Tymoshenko informs a group of Polish pilots that the Russians are preparing a flight into space, and now each of them can become a participant. Two best friends and part-time F-16 fighter pilots, Nikodem and Bohdan, also become candidates for newly minted cosmonauts.

But later, the friendship between the boys cracks. Perhaps because of professional competition, but to a greater extent because of the hot-tempered DJ Marta (somewhere in the world, one Batman has now become tense), with whom both fall in love without memory. Now between grueling training sessions and training flights, young men will try to win the affection of the girl of their dreams.

Already during the space mission itself, something will go wrong. Somewhere in Earth’s orbit, an astronaut will wake up in a capsule. He will press the button to exit the stealth mode, and he will immediately be seen by the radars of the company “SkyCom”, which, in fact, organized this trip. The lost pilot will be able to return to Earth, but not the one he was used to, because 30 years have passed since the launch. And the cosmonaut himself, moreover, has not aged at all.

“The Girl and the Cosmonaut” is a truly remarkable event, at least for the cinematography of Poland. It’s not every day that Polish-made TV series are released, which are positioned as science fiction and even have a bit of erotica on top of that. Although all these are just loud words, since the main genre here is melodrama, and the greatest fantasy is the cooperation of the Poles with the Russians in 2022.

While watching, the viewer will probably feel that he has already seen all this somewhere. Apparently, screenwriter Agatha Malesinska and director Bartosz Prokopowych are well acquainted with Hollywood blockbusters. But they still cannot compete with Western colleagues, in particular due to limited resources.

Here, a long journey in space without obvious signs of aging clearly refers to Nolan’s “Interstellar”. The densely sown corn fields in the frame are taken from there. The melodramatic line that makes up the classic love triangle, and also with two pilot friends and a beauty, makes you think of Michael Bay’s epic “Pearl Harbor”. And the dynamic and short-lived scenes of flights on the F-16 are like “Top Gun” on miniature cars, where, by the way, that still unruly time of men was young.

Erotic scenes are present in each of the six episodes, and this is already a bit of a game in the territory of some Tinto Brass, although, of course, the strawberry here is too episodic to pull the blanket over itself. Primarily, “The Girl and the Astronaut” offers itself as a melodrama, for which all these flights into space and naked bodies are just a background for the central storyline.

The bad thing is that as a story about the feelings of two men for one woman, the series looks unconvincing. Magisterial opinion that true love will definitely pass the test of time is not capable of causing any emotions. The fate of forcibly separated lovers is deeply indifferent. Only one timeline monotonously changes the other and vice versa, and some characters from the future are suspiciously different from their younger versions.

And the point is not that the creators did not cope with dramatic views, although it is so. “The Girl and the Cosmonaut” would feel more comfortable within the framework of a more modest timeline, perhaps even in the format of a full meter. After all, to artificially stretch such a simple and secondary story into 6 series is such an initiative. Half-episode discos, a bunch of secondary characters, unnecessary storylines and scenes are not at all what moves the story forward.

However, technically the project was executed at a fairly high level, considering the modest resources that the Polish cinematographers had. Futuristic gadgets and technologies of the future are unlikely to surprise anyone, but the existing ones look nice.

In addition, the scenes in the air and in space are done decently, the actors seem to be trying, and the visual series is constantly reinforced by musical accompaniment. Here and there, the musical component appears from a completely unexpected side: what is worth only the appearance of the hit Galvanize from The Chemical Brothers.

Overall, The Girl and the Astronaut follows the simple narratives of cheap melodramas, where strong and brave men compete for a woman’s attention until the latter can’t figure out what she wants. At the same time, she shows some will and character less often than her panties fly off, so there is no question of the currently popular image of a strong and independent heroine.

And so, when the case approaches the long-awaited finale, leading to nothing, comes the understanding that the F-16s appearing in the frame would be better used for more useful purposes. If you know what we mean.

Pros:
nice young actors, good picture, decent visual effects, high-quality Ukrainian dubbing of Polish-language content

Cons:
artificial drag that causes complete boredom, melodramatic component, unable to get a response from the audience, minimal presence of science fiction, equally uninteresting timelines, unclear ending

Conclusion:

A Girl and an Astronaut might have been good entertainment for housewives on Polish TV, but as a streaming project for a wider audience it looks uncompetitive