Snowpiercer Season 1 (2020) Review

So this show recently finished its run on Netflix and I have now finished the first season of Snowpiercer and here is my review for it. The premise of the season sees after the world has frozen over a train full of survivors have to fight society and class issues. 

Main Character

Jennifer Conolly plays a lead character here and I thought she did a good job. She is a really good actress and her character is pretty well fleshed out and as the highest person on the train you see the situation from her point of view and I think the show achieves this target well. Daveed Diggs also plays a main role here and first I must mention he was fantastic in Hamilton even though I forgot to mention him in my review for that film and he is also good here. He has a charismatic nature to him, not as much as Hamilton but it is still here and you see why he is seen as the leader of the lower classes of the train. He is a character that is easy to root for and one that does have an interesting moral compass that maybe isn't as simple as I originally thought it would be. 

Supporting Characters

The supporting cast is a bit of a mixed bag here, there were so many characters some I liked some I didn't like much. Firstly, Steven Ogg is here and I love this actor and when he is on screen he is so great on this show, it is just he isn't here enough and is really underutilised. Also Alison Wright plays a character called Ruth and she gets better as the show goes on and I found her character interesting and a bit tragic in the way that she thinks. But there are also a few characters I didn't really care about such as Mickey Sumner as Bess, her character is very dull and I really didn't care about the romance involving her and clearly the show doesn't as they forget about it. There are also other performances, mainly younger ones that I found hard to care about and found a bit cringe at times. 

Story

The story of the different classes is interesting enough, being set on a train is really interesting and seeing the different levels of the train is an interesting aspect of the show and there is a twist in the last half of the show that I thought worked well. But I felt like there was a bit of a missed opportunity the class divide story feels a bit simple and lacking the shades of grey required to raise this story up. Also there is a story arc in the first half of the season that lacked a natural conclusion and it kind of feels like a waste of time. 

Script

The script here is pretty by the numbers, there is some decent drama here and a few bits of humour but nothing that ever stood out for me. There was never that moment that is truly memorable or makes any of the characters really stand out more. 

Style

The style in the train is pretty cool, lighting is used pretty well to show the differences in the cars on the train and the difference in the classes of people. There are also some brutal sequences on the show that fit the nature of the tone of the show well. Though there are probably a few too many episodes here and the actual train here is really CGI and it just doesn't look very good at all. 

Overall

Overall, this is a decent show, it has plenty of issues that most people have seen but I think there is real potential here for a much better second season so maybe this is one to give some time to watch, but only if you are a patient watcher.

Rating - 6/10