Stream It Or Skip It: 'Last Days Of The Space Age' On Hulu, About How A Strike, Miss Universe, And Skylab Hit Perth In The Summer Of 1979 (2024)

We’ve railed against this over and over in our reviews, but there are times when a show introduces far too many characters for it to effectively keep track of their stories. A new Australian series, which explores the confluence of three events in Perth in 1979 from the perspective of three families, is one such show.

LAST DAYS OF THE SPACE AGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the city of Perth. A radio station plays, with the announcer talking about how the Miss Universe Pageant will be held in the Western Australian city, just as a strike at the city’s main power plant is getting underway.

The Gist: Tony Bissett (Jesse Spencer) and his wife Judy (Radha Mitchell) both work at the plant, but since Judy is a bookkeeper, she’s technically management and not on strike. While it seems that this conflict hasn’t affected her and Tony’s marriage, things get a little hairy when someone throws a brick through the windshield of their car with a note directed to her.

In the meantime, we see the Bissett’s teenage daughter Tilly (Mackenzie Mazur) talking to the gym teacher/college counselor at her high school. She’s with her bestie Jono, and she tells the counsellor that she desperately wants an astronaut, as does Jono. Only Jono no longer wants to be an astronaut, as the two of them had always talked about. As far as his parents Lam (Vico Thai) and Sandy (Linh-Dan Pham), who came to Perth from Vietnam, are concerned, Jono should be a surgeon. Either way, the counsellor discourages Tilly, telling her to apply at a department store instead.

Tilly’s free-spirited sister Mia (Emily Grant) is fighting the patriarchy in other ways, namely male surfers who think girls can’t ride the same huge waves they can. She also scratches her head at Tilly’s goody-two-shoes rigidness.

Next door neighbor Eileen (Deborah Mailman) gets a terse visit from her daughter, who is just passing through and wants little to do with her mother. However, her grandson Bilya (Thomas Weatherall) decides he wants to stick around after he sees a curly-haired friend of Tilly and Mia on skates next door.

Judy is promoted to interim general manager at the plant, and given that she knows everything about the people that are on strike — all of whom are Tony’s buddies — she also know their secrets, which puts her in a strong position as she sits across the negotiating table from her husband.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Last Days Of The Space Age is a slice-of-life period piece along the lines The Wonder Years, where current events happening at the time the show is set — the summer of 1979 — are happening along with the everyday lives of the characters.

Our Take: Last Days Of The Space Age, created by David Chidlow, feels like it has about a half-dozen stories going at the same time, but none of them probing all that deeply. Because all of the characters on the show are connected to each other, this is the type of series that will show how changes in one person’s life reverberates among their circle of friends, family and neighbors. But we didn’t seem to have any particular interest in following any of these stories, at least not by the end of the first episode.

The easiest story to connect to was the Judy/Tony story. They’re at a crossroads in their marriage; with Tony on strike, Judy has to pick up the financial slack, something she never wanted or was prepared to do. So when the temporary GM position comes up, she refuses to be considered, even though her family needs the money. She was perfectly happy being a part-time bookkeeper and fulltime mother. But now that she has the job, how she deals with the strike — and her husband’s role in it — will be the most interesting story.

Tilly’s desire to go into space will likely be connected to the crash of Skylab, which went down in the Perth area in July of 1979. To this point, she’s been enamored with the US’s space program, and loved the idea that John Glenn floated above their heads back when Judy was pregnant with her. Will the crash of Skylab shake her faith in the program or make it stronger? The more interesting aspect is her relationship with Jono, which it seems might be more than just besties, at least from Tilly’s end.

Eileen’s story is even less defined than Tilly’s or the one involving Lam, Sandy and Jono. At this point, we know she’s carrying on a down-low casual thing with Tilly’s grandfather Bob (Iain Glen) and she’s now dealing with having her grandson around. But we can’t even fathom where else the story is going to go at this point.

It’s definitely shaggy storytelling; it feels that there will be conflict in the stories not involving the strike at some point, but Chidlow and crew are taking their time to get to whatever that is. In some respects, this could be a retro episode of Neighbours rather than a streaming drama. That’s not necessarily what we’re looking for with a show like this.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: “We’re going to start to fix this… tonight,” Judy says as Tony shoots daggers at her from across the table.

Sleeper Star: We do hope Deborah Mailman’s storyline as Eileen does go somewhere, because she’s the most likable character on the show.

Most Pilot-y Line: In the first scene, while Tony and Judy are in the car, they’re listening to the song “Xanadu,” which won’t be released until about a year after that scene took place.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There are parts of Last Days Of The Space Age that we liked, but the storytelling is too much of a shambling mess to keep our interest.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.