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Review: Love, marriage, and outer space

ABC will go back in time while Amazon Studios hops over to London, in two shows that explore the families we create when we're forced into extraordinary circumstances.

“Launch" is a new television drama series based on the book by Lily Koppel, focuses on seven women who were key players behind some of the biggest events in American history. (ABC/Cook Allender)
“Launch" is a new television drama series based on the book by Lily Koppel, focuses on seven women who were key players behind some of the biggest events in American history. (ABC/Cook Allender)Read more

ABC will go back in time while Amazon Studios hops over to London, in two shows that explore the families we create when we're forced into extraordinary circumstances.

We have lift-off . . .

Behind every great early-space pioneer was a great, Jell-O-salad-making woman. So says The Astronaut Wives Club, ABC's new period drama about the wives of the first astronauts. Itpremieres at 8 p.m. Thursday.

Based on Lily Koppel's book, The Astronaut Wives Club focuses each of its episodes on one of the women married to a member of the Mercury Seven. At first, these women are competitive, but eventually they rally around one another as they go through something only the wife of Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut who beat the Americans to space, had experienced before.

Luke Kirby (Rectify) frames the story as a reporter for Life magazine with exclusive rights to the stories of these women.

His first subject is Louise Shepard (Hell on Wheels' Dominique McElligott), whose husband, Alan (Desmond Harrington, Dexter), becomes the first American man in space. She was presented to the media as a steely nerved perfect housewife who in reality was terrified about her husband's fate. But here she just comes off as . . . a steely nerved perfect housewife, with only hints of humanity showing.

Buried in this show are interesting stories about how NASA made the astronauts' wives give up pieces of their lives and identities to present a squeaky-clean sheen.

Trudy Cooper (Odette Annable) is divorcing her husband, Gordon (Bret Harrison), when she's called back into service because the American public demands nuclear families. Marge Slayton (Erin Cummings) must hide the facts of her life before marriage to Deke (Kenneth Mitchell), which include a divorce, to keep his chances in orbit. Annie Glenn (Azure Parsons), wife of John (Sam Reid), must overcome an intense stutter to talk to the press.

But the wives never feel like fully drawn people. Instead, they feel like takeoffs on what the press latched onto about them in the first place.

It certainly does not help that the show's most exciting moments occur when the wives watch their husbands go off into space - because that's when we get to see beneath the clichés. Even though they're supposedly the focus of their own show, they are sidelined in favor of what they really are: wives of actual stars.

It's an all-around talented cast, rounded out by the likes of Chuck's Yvonne Strahovski as Rene Carpenter and Reba's JoAnna Garcia Swisher as Betty Grissom. Too bad they don't get to play real people.

They're having a baby

While the women of The Astronaut Wives Club experienced fame through traditional means, Catastrophe star Rob Delaney became famous in a particularly 21st-century way: He's really funny on Twitter. (His account has 1.17 million followers.)

But Delaney also happens to be a capable, if nontraditional, leading man in the frank and oddly charming Brit import Catastrophe.

All six episodes of the first season appear on our shores courtesy of Amazon Prime on Friday.

Delaney plays Rob, an American adman. He meets Sharon (Sharon Horgan, who also worked with American leading man David Cross in the painfully awkward, hilarious The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret) while on business in London.

One six-day tryst later, Sharon finds out she's pregnant. Rob never knew his dad (Carrie Fisher makes excellent cameos as his disapproving, tough-talking mom), so he decides to move to London to be with Sharon.

Catastrophe wouldn't work if there weren't a sweet chemistry between Delaney and Horgan. He's all full of American optimism and go-get-'em-ness, while she's pessimistic and sharp, already a bit weary of the new man in her life, who refuses to leave even when she gives him an out.

Though Catastrophe is squarely a rom-com - we're watching these two people fall in love despite various obstacles - it never feels that way. The dialog is sharp and not always nice. It means Catastrophe has to earn its sentiment, which it does with aplomb.

TV REVIEW

StartText

The Astronaut Wives Club

Premieres at 8 p.m. Thursday on 6ABC.

Catastrophe

All six episodes debut Friday on Amazon Prime.EndText

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@mollyeichel