Is 'The OA' brilliant, baffling, or both?

Netflix series The OA may have split opinion, but Jason Isaacs loved being a part of it, writes Ed Power

THERE’S a lot to take on board in new Netflix smash The OA. Life, death, resurrection, mad scientists, blind Russian orphans, choreographed inter-dimensional yoga. And that’s just the stuff that makes sense in this eight-part “mind bending odyssey” — Netflix’s description — from indie film-makers Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij.

The show has been hailed a companion piece to Stranger Things, the 1980s-set sci-fi thriller the streaming giant released to great acclaim last summer. But The OA is far weirder and more challenging. Depending on your tastes, it is either bravura slipstream filmmaking or bonkers art-house nonsense. Perhaps it’s a little of both.

The entire point is that it catches you unawares. If don’t sit bolt upright five times each episode, you’re not watching properly.

That said, the story begins relatively conventionally. A young blind woman named Prairie (Marling) disappears and returns eight years later, her sight mysteriously restored. She now refers to herself as “The OA” and shares the story of her death and resurrection.

This is the jumping off point for what sometimes feels like an X-Files mini-season. Mysteries are woven, twists unveiled, the narrative jumps and swerves, as if determined to send the wavering viewer away in baffled disgust. Some people loved it. You may feel otherwise.

“It was the subject of a heated bidding war and Brit and Zal came on board with a great amount to creative control,” says Jason Isaacs, the Harry Potter actor (Lucius Malfoy) who plays the mysterious Dr Hap Percy (any further details would constitute a massive spoiler). “But they opened the door to all of us who were involved and allowed us bring our own perspectives.”

There are parallels with the Harry Potter franchise, he feels, in that The OA is a rumination on real life disguised as an excursion into the fantastical. It’s a fantasy story with a deeply human message.

“Like the Potter movies, it’s got a magical, taut thriller plot which is really disguising what the show is about — which is human beings and loss and love. That is something they have in common.”

Fittingly, the London-based thesp came by the job in strange circumstances. “I was offered it at midnight. I got a call: ‘There are eight scripts on the way. If you like them, then you’re going to Skype the director and if you like each other you’ve got to leave at breakfast time’.

“Something had gone wrong and they needed an actor to shoot the next day at Grand Central Station. Which was obviously a surprise as I live in London. I said to my kids, ‘I’m going to New York for five months… I’ll come back as often as I can and you can come and visit’.”

He describes Dr Hap as “beautifully complicated”. As with Lucius Malfoy, the villainy is interwoven with a discernible humanity.

“He’s doing things which, at first glance, look terrible. He is a man about whom it is easy to rush to judgment. I think the audience will understand, however, that he is looking for something that has the potential to change everything.”

In addition to the Harry Potter movies, Isaacs has starred in several American network dramas. In 2012, he was cast in the lead of Awake, a cult series cancelled by NBC halfway through its inaugural season. The Netflix model is very different, he reports. “With network television, there is a presumption people aren’t watching very carefully. Maybe they’re ironing or something. So you had better repeat any salient information.

“Also on American TV, you have to be brilliant at going out to commercial in a way that will make people want to come back. That means five artificial breaks — five times you have to throw a hook out. Whereas, on a show like this, if you repeat information it sticks out like a sore thumb.”

“What happens with the networks is that you get a pilot and if you get picked up everyone is thrilled and suddenly there is this giant juggernaut going at breakneck pace,” he elaborates. “You start shooting and maybe get two or three episodes ahead. But then you catch up and it’s like you’re buffering on YouTube. Everyone is panicking on set, scenes are being written as you go. The notion that there is any wider tapestry is nonsense. The rules are very different for a show like this.”

• The OA is on Netflix now

Other new shows on Netflix

A Series of Unfortunate Events (Friday)

Lemony Snicket’s comedically bleak children’s saga was ill-served by a 2004 Jim Carrey-starring adaptation. But Netflix has pressed reboot, with Neil Patrick Harris inheriting the Carrey role of the wicked Count Olaf, determined to steal the fortune of the orphaned Baudelaire children.

Santa Clarita Diet (February)

Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant star as a mismatched couple in a romp that taps the dark comedy lurking beneath a veneer of suburban normalcy.

Marvel’s Iron Fist (March)

After last year’s impressive first season of Luke Cage, Netflix and Marvel will debut their fourth collaboration with Finn Jones as millionaire crime-fighter Danny Rand, taking on the corrupted forces of New York with his eerie kung-fu powers.

Star Trek Discovery (May)

Star Trek returns to the small screen, with Netflix acquiring exclusive European distribution rights for the upcoming CBS drama.

This latest reboot is set a decade or so before the original Sixties ‘Trek, with Sonequa Martin-Green (The Walking Dead) as executive officer Rainsford. This will be the first Trek series where the chief protagonist will be the second in command rather than captain. The idea is “to see a character from a different perspective on the starship — one who has different dynamics with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context”.