The Sentinels review – this epic military drama proves that TV can be different | Television

The showed history has been the longest on TV, let it be For All (what if the Soviets won the space race?), The Man in the High Castle (what if the Axis powers won the second world war?) The Sentinels enter a crowded nation, which often fights conflicts with its ideas on war: what if, during the first world war, the French army prepared a secret group of elite soldiers, capable of extraordinary violence?

An unconventional mix of postapocalyptic, steampunk and classic war drama with a distinctly Gallic (and German) feel, this eight-part series – adapted from comic book series by Enrique Breccia and Xavier Dorison – is a fascinating entry into the “what if?” color. And if it sounds a little on the nose (a bad historical event combined with anachronisms are similar … TV gold?!), know that The Sentinels is so confident in the world building that it can work not as another history, but as a solid sci-fi entertainer.

Our silent hero is Gabriel Ferraud (Louis Peres), a soldier who had already died of paternal complications and was taken out of the army in 1915 and sent to a secret research center. There, he is injected with a serum in a dangerous experiment that causes premature seizures. But it’s too much trouble for the French boffins – the Germans attack with the intention of getting their hands on their enemy’s research, killing one of the Sentinels program experts in the process. (Naturally, we later find out that there was more to the original murder than the audience – or the main characters – would have known.) Gabriel is desperate to be reunited with his wife, Irène (Olivia Ross), and their infant son, but he is actually a prisoner in the Sentinels program: if he is talking about an experiment or a terrorist in any way he chooses. Oh, and the serum is causing her cells to mutate, which gives Dr Marthe (Pauline Étienne) reason to worry. “Lack of control is strange at first,” Gabriel is told by his new comrades in arms – just what you want to hear when you take an experimental drug against your will.

Although most of the action centers on Gabriel – played with a mixture of iron and Peres’s instability – there are also side plots. Irène, a journalist, tries to find out what happened to her husband, and why Col Mirreau (Noam Morgensztern) guards the gates of the soldiers who died in the war. His world collides with that of muttonchopped nightclub owner The Baron (Ouassini Embarek), who is caught up in his sordid, close-to-war activities. And Marthe – an eagle in the French machine who is suspicious of her employers – wonders what Mirreau and friends were doing before the Sentinels program, in a highly secretive way called Project Atlas.

It could be everything very littleand yet The Sentinels pull it off. It does well to create interesting ideas and – seriously – provide answers to some of the questions it poses, rather than falling into the false trap of an ever-increasing, depressing mystery box. The BBC’s press release mentions a “Frankenstein-ian depth and empathy”, which sounds false at first but makes sense as the series progresses. It is the story of two wars happening at the same time: the first world war, of course, and the one that is happening inside Gabriel’s body, as he submits to drugs that he has been forced to take and which makes him suffer from depression. It’s not always pretty (“Je suis dangerouseux,” he declares at one point), but there’s a Shelley-ish, traditional side that persists. At least when Marthe was once again tasked with testing a woman who had been sentenced to death.

The Sentinels have their flaws. Sci-fi tropes abound, and sometimes a shoot-’em-up can feel more like sitting in a cut-scene of a movie than watching a television drama. But it’s still fun and inspiring, and proof that not all TV content these days has to be taken from old franchises and IP threads. The series ends with a final, brutal scene that all-but confirms the second run, and which diverts the temptation to end well and happily on Gabriel’s tale. After all, some histories can play with the horrors of the past, but they don’t go beyond reality.