Snowpiercer makes an uneven detective drama out of its class-divided train, with Jennifer Connelly supplying much of the interest. The first season becomes absorbing, but its solemn dialogue and slow start make that improvement harder work than it should be.
The first season of Snowpiercer is decent science-fiction television with an opening that makes it unnecessarily difficult to settle in. Creators Josh Friedman and Graeme Manson turn a giant train divided by class into the setting for a murder inquiry, introducing its passengers through their competing interests. It is a workable way to introduce a complicated society. Too often, though, the investigation takes precedence over the people whose lives ought to make us care about the answer.
The difficulty is not the mixture of detective fiction and social conflict; those ought to suit each other. A closed community can make every question awkward, particularly when some passengers have more power than others. Here the early episodes spend too much time explaining people through dialogue and backstory, with a solemnity that makes the stranger material feel oddly routine. We grew impatient with the murder inquiry because those explanations kept interrupting the more interesting business of discovering how the train’s society worked.
Jennifer Connelly gives us something worth watching while the plotting finds its pace. As Melanie Cavill, she makes the character’s coldness interesting enough to hold our attention even when the dialogue is doing little to help. Daveed Diggs brings conviction to Andre Layton, and Mickey Sumner makes Bess Till a welcome presence in an ensemble that is not always given enough room to develop. Their acting keeps relationships worth following through stretches when the investigation itself feels less urgent.
The production design team, including Barry Robison, makes the train worth exploring. The sets make the differences between passengers easier to grasp than some of the dialogue does, giving the class conflict a convincing physical setting. The cinematography, with John Grillo among those credited, supports the drama’s serious tone without being especially playful. That restraint helps make the peculiar premise credible. It also becomes a limitation when the writing needs something beyond competent images to distinguish its familiar detective business.
The editing team includes Marta Evry and Jay Prychidny, but the early storytelling has a stop-start rhythm that the cutting cannot disguise. The inquiry repeatedly has to accommodate another explanation before it can move forward. Music credited to The Haxan Cloak and Bear McCreary suits the prevailing seriousness, though the drama hardly needs more encouragement to insist that everything matters. Less emphasis might have made the shifts between crime story, survival drama and social satire feel less laboured, and left more room for the premise’s absurdity.
The first season improves when it gives more attention to its characters and the arrangements keeping this society going. Its longer form begins to feel useful, allowing relationships to complicate the class conflict rather than merely illustrate it. There is more to Melanie Cavill than the initial chill suggests, and the increased attention to her gives the drama a firmer centre. By then, the passengers have become sufficiently interesting that an episode need not depend entirely on the strength of its next investigative development.
The series is most persuasive as science-fiction television when it asks how people with different interests can go on living together. That question gives its enclosed setting a purpose beyond providing a list of suspects, although the stiff conversations remain an obstacle. Try it for the people and their competing claims on the train; expect the detective work to test your patience.
