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In Constellation on Apple TV+, the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace stars as Jo Ericsson, an astronaut whose time on the International Space Station takes a tragic and mysterious turn. The superbly capable Jo battles overwhelming odds to get back to Earth and to decipher why she feels so out of place once shes there. But the real hero of the story its emotional center and vigilant conscience is Jos young daughter, a solemn girl with a significant name: Alice. To understand whats up with her mom, shell have to go through the looking glass.

The uneven but seductively spooky Constellation, which premieres with three of its eight episodes on Wednesday, is a space adventure, mystery and family drama spun from the unstable fabric of quantum physics. People, places and events look different from episode to episode and scene to scene; when a NASA scientist tells Jo that curiosity killed the cat, he is definitely referring to the poor animal inside Schrdingers box.

In storytelling terms, though, the real quantum entanglement is that of straight science-fiction action with dark fairy tale. The shows creator and writer, Peter Harness, working with the directors Michelle MacLaren, Oliver Hirschbiegel and Joseph Cedar, carries off both with aplomb, and maintains a dry tone and an appealing atmosphere of foreboding. The mechanics of the narrative, as Constellation shifts through its different gears, can be creaky, but the show continually draws you in.

The main action begins with a bang, as an unidentified bit of debris cripples the space station during an experiment that seeks a new state of matter. Across two episodes the echoes of Alfonso Cuarns Gravity are heavy as Jo, left alone in the station, deals with a cascade of problems while trying to escape in a Soyuz capsule. Where Gravity ended, though, Constellation is just getting started. The resourcefulness and sanity Jo displays in space define her for the audience, so that we stay on her side when things start to go wrong on Earth.

Jos memories of names, cars, relationships do not completely jibe with what she finds when she gets home to Sweden, and the show slides from adventure into increasingly paranoid thriller, smoothly though perhaps with more time-jumping confusion and open questions than some viewers will have patience for. It plays fair, however by Episode 6 things begin to come clear. At which point Jo and Alice head into the dark northern woods.

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'Constellation' Review: Alice in Wonderspace - The New York Times