Dispatches from Elsewhere

Daring and different, but not dark. It’s a rare feel-good contemporary series that’s not dumbed-down.

What exactly is going on in the series is no clearer at the end of the four episodes I watched for review. That also doesn't really matter all that much. The series is as intriguing as it is heartfelt thanks to stylishly imaginative storytelling and richly developed characters.

We’re hoping that some of the quirkiness of Dispatches From Elsewhere meshes better with story as the series goes along, but the ensemble’s initial chemistry compels us to keep watching.

It can all be overwhelming, but Segel weaves in enough insights on human longing to keep the chase compelling beyond its often confusing clues.

In its first four episodes, the road may feel familiar and it may be a bit slow to get where it’s going, but it’s a lovely stroll all the same.

“Dispatches From Elsewhere” feels like it’s as disconnected as the title implies; as though each episode is a message from a faraway place featuring faraway people that are too formulaic and flat to believe in.

Segal is quite good as the emotionally stagnant Peter, matched by Sally Field's movingly mousy Janice. ... But as they jump through surreal hoops, suggesting a magical realism that too rarely enchants, Elsewhere feels like a long ride to nowhere. [2 - 15 Mar 2020, p.9]

The Dispatches from Elsewhere series is a mixture of fear and the circumstances that each person can deal with a single problem, in the series, we see ourselves as characters to know how far each of the group goes. Courage, daring, fear, loss, all of this has an advantage or a disadvantage when it comes to group work, and the series sends this message indirectly, that help and humanity can still exist even with a problem bigger to solve.

Intriguing curiosity What a difficult show to rate. I'm putting it at a 6 because I found the show mostly positive. Quickly, I think you will probably enjoy the show if you like other shows like Amazon's "Undone" where reality is in question. You probably won't like it if you like all the questions and threads being tied up neatly by the end (or 4th wall breaking experiences). Overall premise is four protagonists get pulled into a mysterious game. Is it a game? Of course that's the question. Each of the first four episodes inviting you to see the game through the lens of each protagonist before pulling out wider as we follow along, trying to understand truth from fiction. For me it fell down in some places, while excelling in allowing you to be able to latch on to the real struggles that each one of these four individuals experience. Whether that's the empty / lonely Peter, the fearful transgender Simone, the detached / cerebral Fredwynn, or the caregiver Janice. The acting is excellent, especially Jason Segel's portrayal of Peter and Eve Lindley as Simone. Where it failed for me is that the show feels like two different things by the finale. First an interesting exploration of a real world event that apparently took place some years ago, while at the end becoming something of a self-reflective vanity project for Jason Segel. The message is over all hopeful but uncomfortably forced when it arrives in the final episode. Funnily I think if the final episode had been left off the show would have ended satisfactorily and even have some room to do another season if someone really wanted that. To be fair this is one of those shows that really only makes sense to be one season. Overall I found it interesting. I don't want to say ground breaking, although the original game/experience clearly was. It's better than average but also decidedly lacking which is why I give it a 6 out of 10.

I don't know what to make of it. On the one hand, it is something different and fresh. But then again a strange series that you don't quite understand. I can’t classify that correctly.