The Right Stuff Season 1 (2020) Review

This show made its way to Disney+ and released episodes weekly but the final episode of The Right Stuff has aired and I have watched it and here is my review for the first season of the show. The premise of the show sees a group of US fighter pilots recruited to test rockets to become the first US astronauts. 

Main Character

Patrick J Adams plays John Glenn & Jake McDorman plays Alan Shepard and they are the two main characters and they give decent performances and I mainly believe that is due to the fact that they are good actors as that comes through, because there characters are rotten to the core and hard to care about at all. John Glenn is a whiny, jealous narcissist and Alan Shepard is a womanizing, unfaithful arrogant man, when these are your two main characters it doesn't exactly make it easy to like them. I mean these are based on real people and I really just wonder how these people feel about the way that they are portrayed on this show. 

Supporting Characters 

Patrick Fischler & Eric Ladin as the heads of NASA are clearly the best supporting characters, you see the pressure really affecting them and they give great performances and feel like the most natural characters on the show. Then we get to the rest of the astronauts and they suffer from the same issue as the main characters but with less screen time, they are all womanising, arrogant people and it is really hard to care about any of them. Colin O' Donoghue gets the most attention, but he is pretty unlikeable and as the season progresses you wonder why they even bother focusing on him. Then there are the wives of the astronauts and I mean they don't give bad performances, it is just there characters are paper thin, and most of them come off as weak for letting their husbands do what they want because they are famous. 

Story

The story has some interesting things about it, seeing NASA really growing from the ground up and the development of the space program and the tests that they had to go through and the real pressure that everybody involved goes under. The issue I have mentioned above is that the main characters are just so unlikeable and hard to care about, the show has a large cast and nobody really truly stands out and if it wasn't for the subject matter this show wouldn't be worth much at all. 

Script

The script is fine, there are actually some pretty intense scenes and heated arguments between the characters that raise the tension well. But the issue is just the writing for the characters, they aren't written well and the show doesn't do a good job of a balancing act to make you care enough, especially when there is a large group of astronauts. 

Style 

The show just is a bit of a drag in terms of its style, there isn't much to really drag you in, there is poor cgi when it is used and it does feel like this show is a little cheap, I don't know if that was just me but I thought the show could have done with a bit more excitement in its presentation. 

Overall

Overall, I am sure the real story and the book is much more interesting then this show as this is just a very dull show that doesn't bring much to the table. A few okay performances aren't enough to aid this show and I would say this is one you can take a pass on. 

Rating - 4/10