Stateless: Season 1

"Strahovski, who’s spent the past three years hemmed into Serena Joy’s circular character arc on The Handmaid’s Tale, gives a beautifully nuanced performance as Sofie."

"West and Blanchett are at society’s fringes, while anti-immigrant sentiment — as series-ending onscreen titles about the ongoing crisis of Australia’s detention centers, now placed offshore — is at the center of societies the world over. It’s a point “Stateless” makes crisply, one that gains in power from the hairpin-reversing manner through which the series arrives there, and one that makes it urgent viewing."

"Despite moving and deeply human performances throughout, Stateless' refusal to take a stance makes it oddly futile."

"Packs an emotional wallop... artfully assembled. Emma Freeman and Jocelyn Moorehouse's direction is smooth. Bonnie Elliot's cinematography is crisp and evocative. The imagery, too, is powerful. Water is everywhere, a metaphor for the journey Ameer's family must take, the life which everyone in the narrative is gasping to find and, ultimately, the one thing denied to everyone trapped in Barton, a dry, arid hole in the outback."

"The two main intertwining stories — an Afghan family fleeing the Taliban and a German flight attendant on the run from her personal demons — make an impression as they highlight the contrast between first- and third-world citizens who decide to change countries. ... Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale) creates an engrossing pop-up character for whom one willingly suspends disbelief."

"Thrilling, surprising drama interrogates painful Australian truths. The Cate Blanchett-led ABC series, just picked up by Netflix, offers a psychologically charged and nail-biting depiction of immigration detention."