The Man Who Fell to Earth

Showtime's The Man Who Fell to Earth has a rough landing with a premiere divided between fish-out-of-water comedy and tech bro tropes.

Yet the wads of cash are enough to get Justin to grudgingly agree to drive him to get a message he needs to continue his mission while he badgers her about continuing her work and she tries to work on his social skills. That gets off to a slow start as Justin initially wants nothing to do with this very strange stranger, only bailing him out after realizing he’s far too naive to take care of himself after he’s beaten up and robbed for walking down the street carelessly scattering money. The plot feels prophetic amidst news of megadroughts and a billionaire space race, yet the premiere of Showtime’s sequel series The Man Who Fell to Earth does little to make a case for its own relevance.

Jenny Lumet & Alex Kurtzman's new adaptation of Walter Tevis's 1963 novel is very 2022, the Oscar nominee says in today's podcast.

However, as I said in my review the other day, this ambitious TMWFTE is “all small screen going big picture” with issues of race, inequity, gender, migration, the environmental crisis, and technology brought to the fore. I’m mean are right up to the minute really, in how we engage with each other in our human connections, but also our connection with our planet..” Joining us on the Hero Nation podcast, the Oscar nominee added that for him “to have that through the eyes of a stranger was so interesting to me.”

Showtime's 2022 remake The Man Who Fell to Earth, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in the David Bowie role, makes good use of his chemistry with Naomie Harris.

But the series fails to address the political element of it in a series featuring several strata of American law enforcement. Certainly, there’s the fish-out-of-water element of being a traveler in a strange land with odd customs and a difficult language barrier. Similar to the 1976 film starring David Bowie (who was always like an alien in his own right), Lumet and Kurtzman lean toward Tevis’ meditations on apocalypses and human error. She also has a young daughter, Molly (Annelle Olaleye), and an arthritic father in constant need of care and medicine, Josiah (a delightful Clarke Peters). Police pick him up, and he requests the presence of Justin Falls (Naomie Harris), a disgraced MIT graduate in quantum physics now shoveling manure in Los Alamos, New Mexico. When President Grover Cleveland pushed a button to light the 100,000 incandescent lamps at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the luminous glow, which left attendees awestruck in the face of modernity, finally shined the world from the proverbial dark ages toward the future.

Here's just how you can watch Showtime's interstellar reboot starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomie Harris, and Bill Nighy.

The Man Who Fell to Earth should appeal to all fans of sci-fi stories and emotional character studies all the same when it bows on Showtime. But if you want to see all the episodes as they come out, Showtime is the only way. The Man Who Fell to Earth faced a difficult battle to make it to our screens. The series was initially planned for a Paramount+ release worldwide, but the American premiere dates will now be exclusive to Showtime and Showtime’s streaming services. Originally conceived as an original series for Hulu, the production moved to CBS All Access and spent over a year of development before the pandemic hit. The new television adaptation of Walter Tevis’s novel of the same name is set to bow on Showtime very soon.

The Showtime series builds on its source material, the 1976 film starring David Bowie, with a hearty dose of optimism about humankind.

If that dynamic, as Kurtzman acknowledges, is a well-worn one, The Man Who Fell to Earth is distinguished by being "grounded in an emotional reality that's very specific to our time right now." Case in point: "I'm a little bit more pessimistic," Harris admits, "but I think this show offers many examples of how it is possible that we can crawl our way out of the hole that we've created for ourselves. "Chiwetel is incredibly cerebral and methodical about everything that he does, so he likes a lot of rehearsals, a lot of talking about the script," explains Harris. "Whereas I don't like any of that. It definitely teaches me things as I as I go along, and I try to keep up." Echoes Kurtzman, who directed the show's first four episodes, "It has to be grounded in actual behavior, in his lack of understanding of things. "As the series goes on, you see him in more and more of a psychologically human space," Ejiofor explains. And the wonderful thing about it is that Faraday teaches her so much, and reminds her about who she truly is and what she is truly capable of." "Like, these parts need to land, and their energy is comedic, but you have to believe the character as well. And the character of Justin, who has lost so much, including losing herself, gets to rejoice in finding herself again." And he recognizes that humanity is worth investing in and worth saving." Despite those cosmic stakes, The Man Who Fell to Earth (premiering Sunday on Showtime) also tells a very intimate story, about "the two loneliest people in the universe finding each other," as co-creator Alex Kurtzman puts it. On the other hand, the 2022 TV show The Man Who Fell to Earth — styled as a continuation of the film, which was based on a 1963 novel — is almost the story of Earth falling, succumbing, to man.

We spoke to actors Clarke Peters, Kate Mulgrew, Naomie Harris, Sonya Cassidy and Joana Ribeiro who told us about their characters…without giving too much away.

It was overwhelming to have this experience but it’s amazing.” Kate Mulgrew spoke of her character Drew Finch, “It’s very hard to talk about Drew Finch, who is the head of science and technology at the CIA, without talking about the edge on which she walks. I do not live in a mansion. While not deliberately or openly provocative she is dangerously ready to do whatever she needs to do to not only survive but to win. In this instance, I hope it’s his genius.” Academy Award nominee Naomie Harris told us, “I was just really blown away with how well it’s written and how well rounded the characters are.

The star of the new Showtime series also chats about playing your own alien, who can fill David Bowie's shoes, and whether there are “too many sorcerers”

As far as him taking on the Bowie role, it takes a legend to play a legend. And so we’ll just see how that relates to everything as we move forward. We tend to think of that isolation as a negative, but often it is a unique vantage point from which to improve certain things. Last time we saw Mordo, he was taking away Pangborn’s ability to walk and declared that the world has “too many sorcerers.” Would you agree? Bill’s the only person on the planet who could have filled those shoes—and does so brilliantly. That’s such an interesting space to begin a character’s journey, learning how to physically assimilate, then how to assimilate language. In the show, co-created by Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman, Ejiofor’s character literally craters in the oil fields of New Mexico from a distant, dying planet. CE: One of the things that drew me was exactly that: somebody who feels very different to the people he’s around and what that difference means. Chiwetel Ejiofor: There are definitely projects that make me lean in—how to tell the stories of our complicated times, through science fiction or other narratives. He has to convince his father so he can save his village. You can only ever find those parts of yourself that remind you of when you’ve been on the outside, isolated. With Faraday, I was intrigued by the idea that if everything is a new experience, how do you then judge where you are?

When looking at the lack of Black characters in science fiction, the saying, art imitates life, brings forth a new meaning. Whether turning on the...

“As Black women, as Black people, we are capable of literally anything,” Harris said to AfroTech. “We’re so underrepresented in so many fields and even when we’re not underrepresented in those fields, we don’t see them often represented in the media on TV and film. So, to help bring that to a mainstream network like Showtime for the world to see is what Harris is truly excited for. The low percentage of Black women in the field can be startling.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a new alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth but his already-known destiny is a miscalculation compared to David Bowie's role.

In Showtime's The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ejiofor plays a different Althean, named Faraday, who comes to our planet to finish the mission Newton started, as well as save the Earth itself. Unfortunately, the evolved version of The Man Who Fell To Earth comes off as an Elon Musk/Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg-like caricature. Showtime's The Man Who Fell To Earth stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris and picks up the story in the present day. David Bowie's film version of The Man Who Fell To Earth is a cult classic and is the version most audiences are familiar with. Indeed, the film's events are also canon in Showtime's The Man Who Fell To Earth, which is otherwise stylistically very different. By reinterpreting it through a modern lens, Showtime's The Man Who Fell To Earth inadvertently ruins David Bowie's iconic role.