Long, strange trip

Franklin (J.K. Simmons) and Irene York (Sissy Spacek) are happily married septuagenarians who lead a quiet life of crosswords and trips to the diner in town in Amazon Prime’s new TV series Night Sky. But they have a secret. A mysterious chamber below their shed has allowed them to make 856 getaways to a glass-enclosed viewing room on a distant planet over the last 20 years.

Where did this chamber come from? The show teases a spectrum of possible answers: maybe aliens, maybe a cult, or perhaps, as one character suggests, the mystery involves “quantum entanglement.” The Yorks’ blissful existence is interrupted when a mysterious young man arrives at their door. How far will Franklin and Irene go to keep their doorway to other planets secret?

Night Sky (rated 16+, for bad language) owes inspiration to its subterranean-hatch-enigma predecessors, Lost and Tales from the Loop, but the show surpasses both in meshing the ordinary and extraordinary. The unhurried storyline moseys forward, but every so often, jarring revelations upend the sense of normality.

The entire cast is outstanding, and Spacek’s spot-on expressiveness demonstrates why she’s one of the ­finest actors working today. So far, Night Sky is a riveting sci-fi drama.