Country of origin United States Original network Netflix | No. of episodes 12 | |
Starring Aml Ameen
Doona Bae
Jamie Clayton
Tina Desai
Tuppence Middleton
Max Riemelt
Miguel Ángel Silvestre
Brian J. Smith
Freema Agyeman
Terrence Mann
Anupam Kher
Naveen Andrews
Daryl Hannah Original release June 5, 2015 (2015-06-05) | ||
The first season of Sense8, an American science fiction drama web television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, follows eight strangers from different parts of the world who suddenly become "sensates"; human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked. The season was produced for Netflix by the Wachowskis' Anarchos Productions and Straczynski's Studio JMS, along with Javelin Productions and Georgeville Television. Unpronounceable Productions has been set up to oversee production for the show.
Contents
A multinational ensemble cast starring Aml Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre and Brian J. Smith portrays the suddenly connected strangers. Freema Agyeman, Terrence Mann, Anupam Kher, Naveen Andrews and Daryl Hannah also star. The season is the first of a proposed five and acts as the origin story for the eight sensates. The episodes' scripts were written by the Wachowskis and Straczynski and the majority of them were directed by the Wachowskis, with the remainder being divided between their frequent collaborators James McTeigue, Tom Tykwer and Dan Glass. Filming took place almost entirely on location in nine cities around the world: Chicago, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Seoul, Reykjavík, Mexico City, Nairobi and Mumbai.
All 12 episodes of the season became available for streaming on Netflix on June 5, 2015 and were met with generally favorable critical reception. The season has become notable for its presentation of LGBT characters and themes, winning the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series. It has also been recognized with a Location Managers Guild award for its use of locations as an integral part of the story, and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. On August 8, 2015, Netflix announced that it had renewed the show for a second season.
The eight sensates
Other regulars
Recurring
The recurring actors are listed by the region in which they first appear.
Critical reception and popularity
Critical reception of the first season of Sense8 has been generally favorable. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator website, reported a 67% critical approval rating with an average rating of 6.11/10 based on 43 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "Some of the scenarios border on illogical, but the diverse characters and the creative intersections between their stories keep the Wachowskis' Sense8 compelling." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the season is assigned a score of 63 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
In a report released by Netflix it was discovered that at least 70% of the viewers that watched up to the third episode ended up watching the entire first season, and Straczynski was told there are people that watch it "straight through – three, four, six times." In another report released by Netflix, Sense8 was listed among the shows whose viewers tend to heavily binge-watch their first seasons, rather than savoring their episodes by watching them at a slower pace. Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos praised the success of Sense8 in the up-and-coming French and German markets but also globally. Vice president of international series for Netflix Erik Barmack has named Sense8 one of the most popular Netflix series in the Brazilian market. Less than three days after the premiere of the first season, Variety reported that it had been pirated more than half a million times, regardless of the series' digital distribution.