n keeping up with just about every other network, Syfy took is joining the miniseries race, once again.
As championed by History, and now embraced by the likes of NBC, Discovery, Lifetime, and so far unsuccessfully by ABC, the miniseries framework will take to Syfy for the first time in five years with a six-hour space opera.
As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the network has given the greenlight to ‘Ascension,’ a miniseries described as one part ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ one part ‘Downton Abbey.’ The story takes place aboard a century-long space shuttle journey where hundreds of men, women, and children secretly escaped Earth in 1963 amid the Cold War.
The action gets started 50 years into the mission, as a woman is murdered and the entire mission to colonize a new world is questioned.
The miniseries is written and created by Philip Levens of 'Smallville,' who will also serve as executive producer and showrunner. Like ‘Battlestar,’ there is always the potential that the six-hour event can spin off into a series.
This is all part of a concerted effort of the network to more towards more space-age drama and away from the cheesy B-movies like ‘Sharknado.’ That said, they are all set for the sequel to that social-media breaking mess of a spectacular.
Syfy has not aired a miniseries since 2009, when the network re-imagined the chronicles of a curious traveler in ‘Alice.’