Fridays - 8et/5pt
DEFYING GRAVITY is a sexy, provocative space thriller. It’s set in the very near future against the background of our solar system, in which eight astronauts from five countries (four women and four men) undertake a mysterious six-year international space mission covering eight billion miles. Hurtling into the vast challenge of infinite space, the eight astronauts and the ground personnel that support them are on a mission, which has a powerful and awesome mystery at its core. The intimate relationships among the astronauts and the ground crew, as well as their actions, from the past and the present, on earth and in space, are all connected. Episodes are divided between the present, as the Antares travels towards Venus, and the past, with flashbacks to the earlier years when the astronauts were in the grueling selection and training process.
The series’ international ensemble cast is led by Ron Livingston (Office Space) as Antares flight engineer Maddux Donner, Laura Harris (24) as ship’s geologist Zoe Barnes, Malik Yoba (New York Undercover) as Antares commander Ted Shaw, Christina Cox (Blood Ties) as biologist Jen Crane, Florentine Lahme (IMPACT) as pilot Nadia Schilling, Paula Garces (THE SHIELD) as pilot, scientist and on-board documentary producer Paula Morales, Eyal Podell (24) as psychiatrist and medical officer Evram Mintz, and Dylan Taylor (House Party) as theoretical physicist Steve Wassenfelder. The cast on planet Earth is led by Andrew Airlie (REAPER) as Mission Control Commander Mike Goss, Karen LeBlanc (ReGenesis) as scientist Eve Shaw, Zahf Paroo (Battlestar Galactica) as grounded flight engineer Ajay Sharma, and Maxim Roy (MVP) as flight surgeon Claire Dereux. Episodic Director Peter Howitt also plays the role of BBC journalist Trevor Williams.