Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Parallels’ On Disney+, A French Sci-Fi Series About Teens Zapped Into Different Parallel Timelines

There’s a reason why parallel universe plots can be fun. Your young self interacting with your older self, people trying to figure out how their parallel selves are different… There are all sorts of possibilities. A new Disney series from France sets up that very scenario.

PARALLELS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Mountains and woods. The year is 2011. A kid is looking at grasshoppers through a magnifying glass.

The Gist: The kid, who’s on crutches, chases his dog through the woods. Suddenly a wave comes through the woods and his disappears.

Cut to 2021. Four high school freshmen — Samuel Deslandes (Thomas Chomel), his brother Victor (Maxime Bergeron), Bilal Belkebirs (Timoté Rigault) and Romane Berthauds (Victoria Eber) — meet after school and decide to meet up that night at their bunker in the woods to celebrate Bilal’s birthday. Victor has news for them: He was skipped into eighth grade to join his big brother, but his academics slipped, so he’s going to repeat the grade, which is a relief to him.

At home, Victor and Sam’s parents (Gil Alma, Elise Diamant), won’t accept Victor repeating a grade, and when they ask Sam if he’s been working hard, Sam demurs. Romane’s mom (Agnès Miguras) asks her to pick up her little sister Camille (Anastasia Ait Zakhar); as they get home, they see Camille’s estranged father Hervé (Dimitri Storoge), who is back and says things are different now. Bilal’s mother Sofia (Naidra Ayadi) leaves her studious son to address a problem at the power plant where she works.

The four of them meet up and go to the bunker, which is decked out for Bilal’s birthday. Bilal tries to uncork a bottle of Champagne but drops it instead. Per the advice he got from Victor, Sam, who has a major crush on Romane, asks her if he can kiss her. As he goes in for that kiss, the power cuts out, then goes back on. But a weird wave that makes Sam see Romane at different ages, goes through the bunker. When Sam wakes up, his friends are gone, but he sees a strange curly-haired man in the bunker.

As the lead police investigator, Detective Retz (Guillaume Labbé) looks into the disappearance, the curly-haired man turns out to be Bilal (Omar Mebrouk), who has the body of his 30-year-old self, but no recollections of anything after that night. He tries to talk to his mother, but Sofia thinks he’s just a strange man in the back of his car; he breaks out of the car and runs to Sam’s house. He convinces Sam that he’s Bilal by revealing his supposed crush, and his real one — Romane.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? With any parallel universe series, the inevitable comparison to Parallels is Sliders.

Our Take: Created by Quoc Dang Tran, Parallels sets up an interesting story in its first 35-minute episode. The four friends are living a pretty normal teenage existence, with the usual teenage issues. But after they’re zapped, the good and not-so-good aspects of their lives come to the fore. The only thing we wonder is just how confusing this setup is going to get.

We know that adult Bilal is now in the same timeline as teen Sam. He got married in 2031, but since he seemingly has the mind of his 15-year-old self, he has no idea whom he’s married to. Are an adult Victor and Romane floating around this timeline (we know that there’s an older Romane and Victor in the cast, but we haven’t seen them yet). Why does 30-year-old Bilal not have his 30-year-old memories?

How is Bilal going to operate in this universe? Is he going to do teen stuff, even though he looks like a grown-ass man? And won’t that be kinda strange?

At the end of the episode, we see that Victor and Romane have been zapped into a different timeline, one without Sam and Bilal. How will that work? And at some point the two of them will likely try to get back to the universe where all four of them are together, or else the show could get quite boring. How will that go down? And how does the boy who went missing in 2011 tie into all of this?

As you can tell, the first episode generated a lot of questions, which is a good sign that the show won’t run out of story before it gets to the end of its first season.

What Age Group Is This For?: The show is rated TV-14, so it’s not necessarily for little kids; we think 12 and up is a good guideline.

Parting Shot: We go back eight hours to when the “blip” happened. Romane and Victor wake up, see that Sam and Bilal are gone, and wonder just what the heck happened.

Sleeper Star: Naidra Ayadi as Bilal’s mom Sofia will have a large role going forward, because she works at the power station that may have caused this blip.

Most Pilot-y Line: On the other hand, Sam and Victor’s parents seem like clueless caricatures, not even trying to find out why Victor crapped out of ninth grade and insisting he’s not going back to eighth.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There are plenty of directions that Parallels can go in, which is the hallmark of a thrilling sci-fi mystery series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.