''Hard Sun'' is a pre-apocalyptic British

crime drama Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as Drama (film and television), dr ...

television series, created and written by Neil Cross, starring Agyness Deyn and Jim Sturgess as the principal characters, DI Elaine Renko and DCI Charlie Hicks. The series is a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

co-production with the American streaming service

Hulu Hulu (, ) is an American Subscription business model, subscription streaming media service owned by Disney Streaming, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was launched on October 29, 2007, initially as ...

. The series contains six episodes. It premiered on

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television b ...

on 6 January 2018, with all six episodes subsequently available on the same day via

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. The series premiered on Hulu in the

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on 7 March 2018. The series has also been acquired by the

Seven Network Seven Network (stylised 7Network, and commonly known as Channel Seven or simply Seven) is an Australian commercial free-to-air Television broadcasting in Australia, television network. It is owned by Seven West Media, Seven West Media Limited, ...

in Australia,

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in Germany and SVT in Sweden. The first series was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 19 February 2018. The show was inspired by the

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics and musicians, pa ...

song " Five Years". Writer Neil Cross has since expressed his wish to continue the series beyond its first run, claiming he has sketched out a potential five-year story arc. It was cancelled after one season.

Premise

''Hard Sun'' is a pre-apocalyptic crime drama set in contemporary

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. The protagonists are two mismatched police officers, Charlie Hicks and Elaine Renko, who stumble upon proof that a mysterious cosmic event will destroy the earth in five years, a fact the government is trying to keep secret to avoid complete anarchy. The duo is pursued by

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

operatives who are trying to silence them for good.

Cast and characters

* Jim Sturgess as Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Hicks * Agyness Deyn as Detective Inspector Elaine Renko * Nikki Amuka-Bird as Grace Morrigan *

Owain Arthur Owain Arthur (born 5 March 1983) is a Welsh actor, who rose to fame playing Francis Henshall in The National Theatre's production of '' One Man, Two Guvnors'' at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. His early years were spent in Bangor, Wales, filmi ...

as Detective Sergeant Keith Greener * Lorraine Burroughs as Simone Hicks *

Richard Coyle Richard Coyle (born 6 February 1972) is an English actor. He portrayed the lead role of Father Faustus Blackwood in the Netflix series '' Chilling Adventures of Sabrina'', and Jeff Murdock in the sitcom '' Coupling''. Early and personal life ...

as Thom Blackwood * Dermot Crowley as Father Dennis Chapman * Varada Sethu as Detective Sergeant Mishal Ali * Jojo Macari as Daniel Renko * Adrian Rawlins as Detective Sergeant George Mooney * Derek Riddell as Detective Chief Superintendent Roland Bell *

Ukweli Roach Ukweli Roach (born September 1986) is an English actor, dancer, and choreographer, best known for playing the role of Jay in '' StreetDance 3D'' (2010), FBI psychiatrist Robert Borden, on the American television series '' Blindspot'' (2015–2020 ...

as Will Benedetti * Joplin Sibtain as Detective Sergeant Herbie Sarafian * Aisling Bea as Mari Butler

Reception

Critical reception

Reviews for the first season were mixed. On the review aggregation website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the first season holds a 50% approval rating with an average rating of 6.46 out of 10, based on 30 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Hard Suns heady mix of narrative and visual flourishes buckle under a surfeit of clichés that ultimately weigh it down and leave the show a muddled mess."

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 46 out of 100 based on 9 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Episodes

References

External links

* * {{Hulu 2018 British television series debuts 2018 British television series endings 2010s British crime drama television series 2010s British science fiction television series 2010s British television miniseries Apocalyptic television series BBC high definition shows BBC television dramas British English-language television shows Hulu original programming Television series by Euston Films Television series created by Neil Cross Television shows set in London