Think Dune, and what springs to mind? Endless desert sands. Massive worms with mouths capable of swallowing cities. Timothee Chalamet’s hair blowing in the wind like he’s in a perfume ad. Oh, and some noble houses playing politics, dressed in funny outfits.
Now take all of that away, bar the last bit, and what you have is Dune: Prophecy, Sky’s newest TV show.
Because no successful franchise can exist without a TV spinoff these days, we’re getting a six-part series – each with episodes an hour long – which focuses on the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.
Who? This is the group that the mother of Paul Atreides (Chalamet) belonged to in the first film: a witchy cult with unspecified magic powers who were behind the ‘prophecy’ that saw Paul get all murder-y by the end.
This prequel series takes us 10,000 years before that, to the early days of the sisterhood (though its origins remain frustratingly opaque). Mind control powers are still in their infancy, and our Reverend Mother is Valya Harkonnen (a po-faced Emily Watson).
She’s a zealot – aren't they all – with a mission: to interbreed the royal houses with the aim of controlling the flow of power in the universe.
And... that’s it? The story itself follows Valya (and her sister Tula) as they go about training young women to release them as spies and advisors into the courts of the empire’s most powerful. And when a man appears with mysterious powers and claims of sabotage taking place on Arrakis, catastrophe looms for the reigning Emperor Javicco Corrino (Mark Strong).
There is more plot, but it’s hard to follow. A lot of Dune: Prophecy involves people in elaborate costumes talking to each other in elaborate rooms. It looks gorgeous, but man is it dry. Where are the frenetic action sequences of the films? Without them, the series is in danger of suffocating on its own dust.
And the characters don’t make it any easier. Who are we supposed to root for here? It’s not entirely certain. Is it Valya, whose po-faced severity bleeds out sideways into the scenes around her? Her quiet, anxious sister Tula (Olivia Williams)? Or is it Sarah-Sofie Boussnina’s Princess Ynez, who seems to fill the designated ‘spunky female royal’ mould left by Florence Pugh?
There are interesting things waiting to be said about the lack of options for women in this sci-fi world. Rather like um, women throughout history, their role seems to be that of wife and babymaker.
The Bene Gesserit seem a compelling alternative to this: a place where women can dodge this obligation and assume powerful roles as advisors to emperors and dukes. Unfortunately, though Prophecy touches on this, it doesn’t really dig into this as much as it could – preferring, instead, to serve us lashings and lashings of sex.
There’s so much sex. It feels a bit like the showrunners looked sideways at Game of Thrones and thought, “how can we copy this?” The wistful glances of the films are replaced by full on horniness, which jars with the quiet political chit-chat taking place elsewhere.
The end result is a concoction that is difficult to digest – surprisingly so, given the good will generated by Denis Villeneuve’s films. This rarefied world of nobles and witches needs more space to breathe – a sci-fi Game of Thrones this is not.
Dune: Prophecy will be available from 18 November on Sky and streaming service NOW
