SummaryProduced by Ron Howard, the hybrid fictional miniseries/documentary set in 2033 as the first mission to Mars with humans begins includes documentary vérité interviews with experts such as NASA administrator Charles Bolden, X-Prize Foundation head Peter Diamandis, Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and The Martian author Andy Weir.
Mars
Season 1 Premiere:
Nov 13, 2016
Metascore
Mixed or Average
59
User score
Mixed or Average
5.6
My Score
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All Seasons
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
36% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
57% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
7% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Nov 14, 2016
83
The series deserves considerable respect for deftly balancing the two seemingly contradictory storytelling devices.
Nov 10, 2016
75
The format is ambitious, and if some parts don’t entirely work, there’s still a lot to like and learn in Mars.
Nov 14, 2016
67
The talking-head portion plays like a video Kickstarter pitch for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, his private rocket company determined to get man to Mars and keep him there in a sustainable community. The drama plays like a low-budget Ron Howard film, which it is, sort of.
Nov 11, 2016
58
[Mars] sounds compelling, but it suffers from some of the same problems as big screen flops like John Carter and Mars Needs Moms: There's just nothing especially appealing about an endless red desert. [18 Nov 2016, p.52]
Nov 14, 2016
50
The six-part event series obscures a reasonably engrossing, science-star-studded documentary about future exploration of the Red Planet with a far less interesting scripted drama about Mars travel that plays as basically The Martian without the personality or poop potatoes.
Nov 11, 2016
50
Mars feels somewhat familiar, but combining the fiction and nonfiction elements is an interesting attempt. Give NatGeo credit for trying something different. Whether this hybrid satisfies fans of either genre remains to be seen.
Nov 12, 2016
20
A weird attempt to blend documentary and sci-fi, Mars is an exquisite botch of both. Its only real accomplishment is to set back the reputation of executive producer Ron Howard to the days when he was murdering the mommies of adorable little baby birds on The Andy Griffith Show.
User score
Mixed or Average
49% Positive
49 Ratings
49 Ratings
18% Mixed
18 Ratings
18 Ratings
34% Negative
34 Ratings
34 Ratings
Aug 18, 2020
10
Part documentary, part sci-fi (light) series, Mars is an astonishing fictional AND educational series that should have absolutely been renewed for a third season. Groundbreaking in its mixture of reality with future reality and so much more than your average science fiction title, Mars delivers with deep-immersion by keeping its audience personally hooked to the storyline by seamlessly adapting the current excitement of SpaceX pioneers and the challenging scenarios laid out by NASA scientists and astronauts into a believable -and even very probable- fictional account of the Mars'colonization also thanks to a great international cast. Highly recommended to anyone interested in or even wanting to understand the importance of space exploration and the inevitable challenges, and a must of course for every amateur of quality sci-fi.
Mar 20, 2020
8
Is a good middle way between TV series and doc.
Is a right choice to escape from classic SciFi where only fantasy and few reality work.
Production Company:
- Imagine Entertainment
- Pioneer Stillking Films
- RadicalMedia
- Zak Productions
Initial Release Date:Nov 13, 2016
Number of seasons:2 Seasons
Rating:TV-PG
Awards
Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA)
• 2 Nominations
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA
• 1 Nomination
Cinema Audio Society, USA
• 1 Nomination
