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Following Denis Villeneuve’s hugely successful Dune films, a television spin-off explores the origins of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood
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Hollywood has sucked Marvel and Star Wars dry and so the hunt is on for another geek-friendly franchise to be upcycled into a lifetime supply of lucrative spin-offs. The search has been ongoing for several years, but until very recently, you’d have had long odds on Frank Herbert’s Dune series being the chosen one. His tale of blue-eyed prophets, psychedelic spices and giant worms is beloved. It is also very odd. So odd that even David Lynch – cinema’s baron of barmy – couldn’t get his head around the story when hired to adapt the first Dune book in 1984.
But the success of Denis Villeneuve’s duo of Dune movies has changed everything. Eight months after the second of those films, the Dune universe is expanded further with a prequel in which Emily Watson and Olivia Williams play a duo of wily space nuns. They are founder members of what will become known as the Bene Gesserit – a conclave of scheming sisters who plan to tweak the bloodline of future generations of interstellar royalty so that they will one day give birth to a being of supreme power. They’re the Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole of intergalactic saviours. And their goal is a lot bigger than Christmas number one.
That’s one hell of an elevator pitch, and it feels like a minor miracle that Dune: Prophecy (Sky Atlantic) has made it to the screen – all the more so considering a troubled production involving multiple showrunners and a major “creative overhaul” in early 2023. An even bigger surprise is that it’s great fun – with the caveat that its spiritual predecessor is less Dune than Game of Thrones. Back-stabbing royals, a largely British act (alongside Watson and Williams, the suddenly ubiquitous Mark Strong pops up as Emperor of the Universe), over-the-top sex scenes… Throw in Sean Bean having his head chopped off and you’d have the entire George RR Martin bingo card.
The story takes place 10,000 or so years before the events in Dune – and shortly after artificial intelligence has been wiped out in an existential struggle between humanity and hordes of robots. In the books, the conflict is known as the Butlerian Jihad. Dune: Prophecy, however, refers to it as the “machine uprising”. With the smoke from that war still clearing, a space warrior played by Cathy Tyson establishes a monastic order of female mystics – into which she welcomes a pair of down-on-their-luck aristocrats, headstrong Valya Harkonnen and her sister Tula. By the time of the Villeneuve films, the Harkonnens will have become bald, brooding baddies out for Timothée Chalamet’s blood. Their hair is still present and correct in Dune: Prophecy, though their moral code has already started flaking away.
Valya is played by Jessica Barden (The End of the F***ing World) in the past and by a riveting Watson in the “present day” 30 years later. The story of her rise to power is told with rapid cuts between the timelines. Valya’s early life takes place on the Harkonnnen’s medieval-style homeworld, which could come straight from an early season of the aforementioned Thrones.
Fast forward three decades, and in the imperial capital of Salusa Secundus, the Emperor (Strong, pulling off a stilted buffoon to perfection) urgently requires a fleet of starships to put down one of the semi-regular uprisings on Arrakis – the planet also known as Dune and source of the mystical spice that facilities space travel. A marriage is arranged between his headstrong daughter Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina) and the scion of another noble house.
The privileged princeling is nine years old and could do with being sent to bed without supper. Still, emperors can’t be choosers when alliances are to be made, so it’s full steam ahead on the nuptials front. That palace intrigue is interwoven with some simple wargames as we meet the novices studying under Valya and Tula (Williams excels as the ruthless “quiet one” in the partnership). These student nuns are an interchangeable bunch played variously by Aoife Hinds, Faoileann Cunningham and Jade Anouka, and are the show’s weakest element.
The producers of Dune: Prophecy say they are honouring the “tone” of the Villeneuve films – a sort of elevated gloominess that is both awe-inspiring and stonkingly grim. It is certainly beautiful to look at and features the franchise’s signature asymmetrical spaceships and top-drawer costuming.
But this is very much its own show and can be enjoyed even if you’re only vaguely familiar with the source material (the plot is loosely adapted from a prequel book co-authored by Herbert’s son Brian). It’s certainly far friskier than Villeneuve’s buttoned-down movies. Random sex scenes are dropped in at any opportunity – inevitably featuring the emperor’s caddish illegitimate son Constantine (Josh Heuston).
There is also a big set piece in which a person is burned alive by an assassin using mind control. It’s just what you’d want of a prestige science fiction series determined to prove there is life beyond Star Wars. Dune: Prophecy doesn’t feature a whole lot of the huge wriggling sandworms that are a Dune signature, but is still more than capable of standing on its own two feet.
Dune: Prophecy begins on Sky Atlantic on November 18
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