In the Flesh: Dune: Prophecy s1e01 'The Hidden Hand'

All the stars are here! Mark Strong, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmell, and a half dozen more genre and period stalwarts anchor the exciting and enigmatic series premiere of Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker’s Dune: Prophecy. To call a big-budget genre series created, helmed by, and starring women — especially older women — “unique” feels like putting it lightly. It’s incredible this thing got made at all, and from what ‘The Hidden Hand’ shows us, I’m exceedingly glad it did. Palace intrigue, transhuman conditioning, sci-fi spectacle, dreams of doom and disaster revolving around Arrakis and its legendary sandworms — Prophecy comes out of the gate with its guns blazing. In the space of about ten minutes we’re given a crash course on Bene Gesserit politics, eugenics, the holy war against thinking machines known as the Butlerian Jihad, and the fragile state of post-war detente in the still fledgling Corrino empire. That it comes off without feeling like a slog is largely thanks to series co-creator Diane Ademu-John’s deft and fast-paced script, which fairly flies along.

Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen (Watson) and her sister, Tula (Williams), anchor a large cast of novices, power players, and royals, their dynamic evoking that of Reynolds Woodcock and his brusque, unflappable sister, Cyril, in Phantom Thread. Watson is doing some marvelously subtle work in the lead role as a brilliant political architect whose grand vision is undercut by her own resentments and fixations and, we know, doomed to bring the Corrino Empire under the yoke of Muad’Dib and his unimaginably bloody jihad, still ten thousand years off from the show’s setting. Beneath them, the vast edifice of Bene Gesserit power prepares to take the galaxy’s reins after decades of preparatory scheming, the order’s hopes currently riding on princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), an ambitious and spirited young royal and daughter of the haplessly beleaguered emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong). Strong is great playing against type, a lame duck taking over for a long string of war heroes, and Boussnina has a compellingly reckless edge belied by her supermodel good looks.

The visuals here are very much in the mold of Villeneuve’s films, with which Prophecy is in continuity, but the color palette hews a little warmer and more distinct, a welcome change for mainstream prestige art. Director Anna J. Foerster does good work within the monolithic headquarters of the Sisterhood on Wallach IX, where women drill ceaselessly to reshape their minds and bodies into something more than human, and her affinity for capturing quirks of facial acting to maximum effect is immediately clear. She has a good cast of faces with which to work, too, with only a few catalog-ready cast members, and the lighting makes excellent use of every wrinkle and fold. Nor are we plagued here by groan-inducing callbacks to Herbert’s novels or call-forwards to Villeneuve’s movies. With strong writing, a first-rate cast, and stark, compelling visuals, Dune: Prophecy is off to an ((if you’ll pardon the pun) auspicious start.