‘Dune: Prophecy’ Review: Sisterhood of Gloom
You wonder what will be next. Star Wars has been exhausted. Game of Thrones has turned into House of the Dragon and with the promise – threat? – of an anthology series and a potential film. Let us not start on Marvel and DC’s adventures into the multiverse. Except you don’t really have to wonder because the answer is right there, staring us in the face like a towering sandworm in a barren desert: Dune. The expansive book series begun by Frank Herbert and recently given a sophisticated film overhaul by Denis Villeneuve has now been plundered by the prestige TV titans at HBO, who have delivered onto us Dune: Prophecy.
This series is inspired by Sisterhood of Dune, a spin-off book by Brian Herbert (Frank’s son) and Kevin J. Anderson, about the creation of the shadowy organisation known as the Bene Gesserit. It’s 10,000 years before Villeneuve’s films kick off, though you will recognise the architecture. The severe sisterhood is headed up by Emily Watson as Valya Harkonnen and Olivia Williams as Tula Harkonnen. Elsewhere Mark Strong’s Emperor Corrino is attempting to secure interplanetary peace and his family’s dominance (not too different from his role in HBO’s recent hit The Penguin). His daughter Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) and illegitimate son Constantine (Josh Heuston) are parading about their planet Salusa Secundus (yes, really) in nightclubs.
The plan of the sisterhood is to create good and more importantly pliable leaders through a series of marriages and merging of birth lines. As a young Valya, whose family have been banished, asks in an opening voiceover: “What holds more truth? History or prophecy?”
Showrunner Alison Schapker brings a nerdy appeal to this world, with its lessons in mind control and aversion to “thinking machines” (computers), and it’s much more satisfying when it leans into that. Often, there’s a tendency to frame the show through our understanding of the films (Villeneuve has had nothing to do with this show) which makes sense for getting audiences on board but doesn’t always respect their intelligence.
You know Timothée Chalamet? Well, here’s another young dude with good hair. You liked Charlotte Rampling as a severe nun in the film! Maybe a slew of British actresses will satisfy your craving. You can recall the goodies (House Atreides) and the baddies (those pesky Harkonnens). Well, here’s an origins story that might change how you think. You knew where this was going before it even started.
Still, some inventive touches. I liked the vape-cum-gas masks – through which the young’uns huff the elusive spice (you remember that from the movies, too!) – and bonus: there is actual sex here. It is sexposition, as is mandatory in these kinds of show, but it’s at least more lustful than the middle-distance stares of the films.
But as the episodes wore on, it became obvious that this series is doomed by comparison. The first is its HBO stablemate, House of the Dragon (and Game of Thrones before it). Dune: Prophecy is clearly being positioned as an alternative to that franchise, though I do not think that anyone involved in Westeros has much to worry about. No one in Dune: Prophecy is having as much fun as Matt Smith or emoting as miserably as Emma D’Arcy. And for whatever House of the Dragon’s faults – a little ponderous, a little repetitive – it had a distinctive look and feel.
The second, obviously, is Villeneuve’s Dune franchise which bring to life Herbert’s world in a much more attractive way. It is not that those films adaptation dumb down Herbert’s plot (the source material is not exactly intellectually challenging, there are just a lot of silly names to remember) but both instalments are crammed full of arresting visuals: the palace raid in the first film, the Harkonnen ambush in the sequel. These plasticky sets are reminiscent of naff nightclubs; the fight scenes are uninspired; the weddings are drab. Not one scene in Dune: Prophecy measures up to those, though I am sure the budget did not either.
Mostly though I wanted to see something cool: a spaceship, a sandworm, a… smile (no jokes in this series). Instead, Dune: Prophecy is a little spiceless.
‘Dune: Prophecy’ is available to watch on Sky or NOW TV. New episodes weekly
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