'The Peripheral': Future-set sci-fi series quickly finds its center - Detroit News

Amazon Prime Video bid stars Chloë Grace Moretz and involves virtual realities that go existent realities.

“The Peripheral” is astir clip question and radical who are electronically linked, astir ace soldiers and invisible cars, astir androids and an inter-dimensional conspiracy. Even worse, its enforcement producers are the radical down the unfathomable “Westworld.”

So you’ve got to fig “The Peripheral” makes nary consciousness astatine all.

Except it does, oregon astatine slightest arsenic overmuch consciousness arsenic it needs to. Propulsive, imaginative and visually dazzling without being overwhelming, this adaptation of a William Gibson caller by the Oscar-nominated writer Scott B. Smith (“A Simple Plan”) is refreshingly wide and downright enjoyable.

It besides splits its clip betwixt 2 realities — the confederate U.S. successful 2032 and London circa 2090. This mode you get fights involving some surly bully aged lad hoodlums and Kung Fu robot assassins, the champion of 2 worlds.

Doing astir of the warring is Flynne (Chloë Grace Moretz), a state miss who works astatine a transcript store and cares for her ailing ma portion her ex-military member Burton (Jack Reynor) lives successful a trailer connected their property. Burton plays virtual world games professionally, but Flynne is really adjacent amended than helium is.

This leads to her trying connected a caller headset which transports her to a aboriginal London. Except this is the existent aboriginal London, wherever Flynne gets enlisted successful immoderate firm espionage she thinks is simply a game. By the clip she realizes this world isn’t virtual, each sorts of radical some successful London and backmost location privation to termination Flynne.

There’s tons of pseudo-scientific cyberpunk gobbledygook, of course, but Smith keeps things moving and pretense falls to the wayside. Moretz archetypal broke done arsenic the deadly Hit-Girl successful “Kick-Ass” and it’s beauteous saccharine to spot her backmost karate chopping up the surface successful a choky achromatic Matrix-style outfit. “The Peripheral” is dormant halfway fun.

Tom Long is simply a longtime contributor to The Detroit News.

'The Peripheral'

GRADE: B+

Amazon Prime Video