Fiona Wu

'Away' (2020) - Season 1, 10 episodes. Binged in 2 days. When the trailer first auto-played on Netflix, while a bit annoying at times, I was unusually and instantly hooked by the premise of space exploration. Yet, what caught me were the themes. Critics may go on about cliches, but to me, it is about new ways to resolve old chestnuts. Leaving home, coming-of-age, isolation, difficult choices between family and country and passion... but more than that, discovery and wonder. Loving it! What's also different is that there were major Chinese cultural themes on board. Okay, some were cliched, such as the father who berated about his son getting a 98% on his math test, which felt a bit hyper-real. The migration of the Chinese astronaut and her journey in learning English felt ever so familiar. In those scenes, Mandarin was spoken, but the research into their mannerisms and the use of fluent, colloquial mandarin made me feel as if I was pulled away into a homely Chinese drama series, and a truly integrated multicultural piece. The new stuff? The series showed the first Chinese same-sex female relationship that I've seen introduced and explored. I'm so damn proud. To top it off, I have never before seen this explored either, but who knew I'd felt healed, again, by a Russian character saying: "Something that took me almost 60 years to understand. Motherland is just an idea. Borders don't exist. The only thing that matters is the people you love. Whatever you owe them, you have alread paid. And if they are not proud of who you really are, they are just stupid fools".