In 2017, Naomi Alderman’s novel about teenage girls suddenly acquiring the ability to shoot electricity from their fingers arrived right on time. The defiance of women and girls was a constant part of the news cycle, from the Women’s March in Washington DC to the rise of the #MeToo movement. They were making noise about the ways that misogyny was impacting their lives, and holding perpetrators to account. Six years later, andThe Power has now been adapted into a big-budget thriller series for Prime Video. With a punchy script from an all-female writers’ room –including Sarah Quintrell, Raelle Tucker and Alderman herself – and characters who both inspire and feel accessible, the story is as timely as it has ever been.
“Every revolution begins with a spark,” an opening voiceover tells us. “We never dared to imagine it; a world that was built for us, where we wrote the rules.” Through fast-paced flash-forward scenes, the audience gets a taster of the thrills and destruction to come. But over the course of the first episode’s hour, we only see the start of this curious phenomenon that allows girls around the world to electrocute at will. In Seattle, we meet Jos (Auli’i Cravalho), the daughter of mayor Margot Cleary-Lopez (Toni Collette). A soft-spoken teen to start, Jos discovers her zappy new quirk and soon finds comfort in her female classmates, who are also setting microwaves on fire.
