The Big Door Prize: Thanks to charismatic Chris O’Dowd this sci-fi mystery series is impossible to dislike

A playful sci-fi mystery with big ideas and a bigger heart, David West Read’s series takes its cue from a novel by M.O. Walsh and tells the story of a small American town where a mysterious fortune-telling machine plays havoc with the residents’ lives.

‘Morpho’ arrived out of nowhere. Deerfield grocery store owner Mr Johnson (Patrick Kerr) never asked for the machine, and he has no idea who sent it. His teenage shop assistant Jacob (Sammy Fourlas) sets it up and switches it on — but he’s just as clueless about its origins.​

Whatever it is, Morpho brings in customers and, for a couple of dollars, it will reveal your life potential. It’ll also need your social security number and your fingerprints, but that’s not important. What’s important is the little blue card you receive once you’re finished.

For some, the blue card reads ‘superstar’ or ‘royalty’. For others, it reads ‘liar’ or ‘teacher / whistler.’ That last one belongs to Dusty Hubbard (O’Dowd), a friendly, 40-year-old high school teacher who refuses to believe that a bulky arcade machine can predict the future.

Alas, everyone around Dusty is obsessed with Morpho. Some of them have quit their jobs, left their homes and have spent their life savings on the things that Morpho told them to do. And then there are the blue dots.

Dusty has some on his backside — they showed up around the same time as Morpho, and he’d love to know where they came from. What, you may ask, does any of this mean? I don’t know. And, when the first season ended, it looked like nobody else did, either.

Season two picks up where we left off. Like all the weirdest TV sci-fi sagas, The Big Door Prize has decided that the most convenient way to avoid answering impossible questions without wrapping up the story is to throw more impossible questions into the mix. That will get annoying after a while.

As it turns out, Hana (Ally Maki), the local bar owner, and the Morpho machine go way back. She, too, has mysterious blue dots on her skin, and Hana also encountered Jacob’s twin brother before he died in an accident. Call it a coincidence, but now, with Jacob’s help, Hana figures out a way to programme the “next stage” on the machine.

Meanwhile, Dusty and his wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) have decided to separate. It’s temporary, and they believe it’ll be good for them. Plus, it’s probably the best option now that the freaky arcade machine is filling people’s heads with unsettling video game-like visions of the future.

Dusty’s vision is simple: in it, he’s enjoying the slopes at a ski resort in Whistler, Canada. Cass’s vision, meanwhile, is considerably darker. It involves a murder — two murders, in fact, and though the vision is likely metaphorical, it unsettles both Cass and her worrisome husband.

Elsewhere, Giorgio (Josh Segarra) looks to have found his one true love, and Father Reuben (Damon Gupton) adapts to a life beyond the church, and Trina (Djouliet Amara), Dusty and Cass’s teenage daughter, wraps her head around her parents’ complicated split.

Funny, charming, and occasionally frustrating, The Big Door Prize moves in peculiar ways. Season one offered up a tantalising selection of trippy concepts and complex themes, most of it held in place by a strong and steady cast.

As it stands, there is a danger of The Big Door Prize falling into what I like to call ‘The Lost Trap’

Season two doubles down on the dizzying premise, and that’s fine for now, but at some point it will need to start explaining itself. As it stands, there is a danger of The Big Door Prize falling into what I like to call ‘The Lost Trap’.

A tropical island in the middle of nowhere on which polar bears run free and a shipwrecked adventurer enters hourly codes into a supercomputer sounds fun, but unless it all means something, it’s useless.

Indeed, Lost was occasionally wonderful, but it inevitably talked itself into a corner, and I have a similar concern about The Big Door Prize. Read’s series has a lot to say about life and the way we live it — but it’s beginning to look and sound as if it’s making things up as it goes along, and that will eventually lead to all sorts of trouble.

It’s lucky, then, to have O’Dowd, a loveable, charismatic performer who makes everything he’s in that little bit better. I’m rooting for this show, and The Big Door Prize is impossible to dislike. I just hope it doesn’t let me down.

​All 10 episodes of ‘The Big Door Prize’ season two are now streaming on Apple TV+