Defying Gravity is a multi-nationally produced space travel television drama series created by James Parriott and set in the year 2052, which follows eight astronauts from four countries on a six-year space mission through the Solar System, during which they are monitored from Earth via a real-time communication system.
The series was pitched to networks as "Grey's Anatomy in space".
It originally aired in Canada on CBC from 2 August to 23 October, 2009. There are 13 hour-long episodes in the series, although only eight aired in the USA before the series was cancelled.
Defying Gravity premiered in South Africa on DStv's M-Net Action channel on Tuesday 17 August 2010, at 18h00. New episodes broadcast weekly. There are 13 episodes in the series.
Repeats
Tuesdays: 22h00
Wednesdays: 10h00
Sundays: 10h00
Synopsis
From executive producers James Parriott and Michael Edelstein comes Defying Gravity, a sexy, provocative space thriller 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 who support them are on a mission that has a powerful and awesome mystery at its core.
The intimate and interconnected relationships among the astronauts and the ground crew, as well as their past actions, have a strangely karmic effect on the present.
Episodes are divided between the present, as the Antares travels towards Venus, and the past, with flashbacks to earlier years when the astronauts were in the grueling selection and training process.
The series' international ensemble cast is led by Ron Livingston as Antares flight engineer Maddux Donner; Laura Harris as the ship's geologist, Zoe Barnes; Malik Yoba as Antares commander Ted Shaw; Christina Cox as biologist Jen Crane; Florentine Lahme as pilot Nadia Schilling; Paula Garcés as pilot, scientist and on-board documentary producer Paula Morales; Eyal Podell as psychiatrist and medical officer Evram Mintz; and Dylan Taylor as theoretical physicist Steve Wassenfelder.
The cast on planet Earth is led by Andrew Airlie as Mission Control commander Mike Goss; Karen LeBlanc as scientist Eve Shaw; Zahf Paroo as grounded flight engineer Ajay Sharma; and Maxim Roy as flight surgeon Claire Dereux.
Episodic director Peter Howitt also plays the role of BBC journalist Trevor Williams.
Created by James Parriott, Defying Gravity was inspired by Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets, a fictional docudrama produced by Impossible Pictures for the BBC.
The series is a co-venture between Fox Television Studios and Omni Film Productions and is produced in association with Canada's CTV and Germany's ProSieben.