No longer a perfect 60s nuclear family, the Robinsons have gained some 21st-century attitude and dysfunction – and their robot no longer looks made of cardboard

When Irwin Allen’s series about the Robinson family, and their struggles to survive once marooned in space, ended its initial three-series run, man had yet to take his first small step on the moon. Now, with Elon Musk talking about getting his Mars colony up and running by 2040, this Netflix reboot doesn’t require such a giant leap of the imagination.

I’m (just) too young for Lost in Space 1.0, but I found the first episode. Wow, it looks like the TV equivalent of cave painting. It’s atmospheric, with great John Williams music, but the robot looks like it was made from cardboard boxes and bits of plumbing equipment. The medium has travelled light years in half a century.

There is nothing cardboard about the new one – a serious Netflix budget sees to that. The Robinsons, no longer the perfect nuclear 1960s family, have gained some 21st-century attitude and dysfunction. The parents aren’t really together; the kids have modern anxieties and mardiness. On the way to establish a new colony, they crash on a planet that looks like Canada but with even more extreme geography, weather and fauna. The opener is packed with nail-biting action and literal cliffhangers. Matriarch Maureen (Molly Parker) has broken her leg, Judy is trapped under the ice, time is running out, Will falls down a crevasse into a scary forest where he meets his robot (less plumbing, more CGI, same utterance: “Danger, Will Robinson”).

The scene-setting continues over the next few episodes, with flashbacks to fill in the holes in space and time, and the introduction of other survivors, including wicked stowaway Dr Smith (Parker Posey – Dr Smith is now a woman). After that, it can settle into an orbit of family adventures.

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It looks great. I love the new Chariot. And it’s not unfun. But nor does it boldly go where no sci-fi show has gone before. Some of the characterisation is crude. Doc Smith, for example, is a two-dimensional comedy baddie rather than a proper villain to have nightmares about. The parents’ marital issues are touched on rather than explored. The kids are annoying, although, well, they’re kids, they’re allowed to be. But it’s all a bit shallow. I don’t feel myself getting lost in it.

And if you put it next to a certain other family sci-fi programme that also began in the 60s and was reborn in the 21st century, and which also has a doctor – the Doctor – who recently regenerated as a woman, it lacks wit and warmth and wizardry.

A missed opportunity then. But perhaps it’s also reassuring – not that there’s life out there, but that, when it comes to television drama, money isn’t everything.