Jun 5, 2015 4 min read

The first episode of the Andy and Lana Wachowski’s new drama for Netflix will leave you unhinged. The second episode will only confuse you. By the third, you may very well think the sci-fi drama is either madness, genius or both.

“Sense8,” available for streaming on the Netflix site and other platforms Friday, is about eight people living in different parts of the world who become psychically connected after experiencing the same violent vision.

At various points, the “sensate” eight transmigrate into each other’s space – seeing, feeling, hearing what another one is experiencing.

While most series use the premiere episode to establish character and situation, the first episode of “Sense8” is a visual and aural whirl, sensory overload used to condition viewers’ perception to the experiential interchangeability that is the key to the drama and characters of the series.

The images are brief and ever-changing in the premiere episode, propelled by a frenetic music score by Tom Tykwer and Johnny Klimek. We meet the sensate eight in passing, not knowing much about them at first, just where they live. Will (Brian J. Smith) is a Chicago cop, Nomi (Jamie Clayton) is a transgender woman in San Francisco about to march in her first Pride Parade; Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre) is a Mexican film heartthrob; Sun (Doona Bae) is a Korean businesswoman; Kala (Tina Desai) is a pharmacist in Mumbai engaged to be married; Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) is a gifted Berlin safecracker; Capheus (Aml Ameen) is a bus driver in Nairobi; and Riley (Tuppence Middleton) is an Icelandic-born DJ in London.

Watching the first episode is like riding a merry-go-round that’s spinning at top speed and then begins, gradually, to slow down. As it does so, we pick up a little more and a little more about each character. Kala isn’t in love with the man she’s about to marry, but is unable to find the courage to end the relationship, for fear of breaking her parents’ hearts. Will is haunted by issues involving his father. Lito is one of the sexiest men onscreen, but how serious is his involvement with his beautiful co-star (Erendira Ibarra)? Capheus can barely eke out a living as a bus driver, and is desperate to help his mother, who has AIDS. Nomi is fighting to maintain her true identity, while her mother, a devotee of the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, insists on referring to her by her birth name: Michael.

Like flashing images on that slowing carousel, some of the stories come into sharper focus than others. Sun, Wolfgang and Riley remain more enigmatic in the first three episodes of the series than, say, Lito, Will and Nomi do.

Brilliant as so much of “Sense8” is, it’s also at brief times inexplicably lame. Although Nomi’s story is effectively and clearly communicated through drama, we’re nonetheless subjected to extended preachiness about transgender acceptance. Few would, or should, disagree with the sentiment, but the bloviated arias are unrealistic and not really needed, since their points are far more effectively dramatized in Nomi’s interactions with her lover (Freema Agyeman) and her mother (Sandra Fish).

But “Sense8” isn’t just a multilayered and multidimensional character study: It’s also a sci-fi thriller.

“Sense8” may seem fairly messy on the surface, especially early on, but the messiness replicates real life, in a way: This is how we perceive things. An image here, a fleeting sound there, another sound layered on the first sound, an image moving in or out of our frame of vision.

Just as our brains synthesize the bits according to what we want to sense or what insists on our attention in life, the same process clicks in with “Sense8.” If the series had begun with the more linear third episode, a good part of its impact probably would have been lost on us.

You have to admire both the ambition of the filmmakers and the sophistication of their vision. It just makes sense.