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There's a Game of Thrones reunion in Amazon pilot Oasis

Photo credit: Amazon Prime Video
Photo credit: Amazon Prime Video

From Digital Spy

Richard Madden is a man who's lost everything but his faith in Amazon's sci-fi pilot Oasis.

Available to watch now on Amazon Prime Video, the space-age drama – based on Michel Faber's 2014 novel The Book of Strange New Things – stars Madden as Peter Leigh, a chaplain who departs Earth for a new space colony following the death of his wife.

Meeting a diverse cast of characters, who are all keeping their own secrets, Peter soon discovers that mysterious forces are at work on his new home planet.

Photo credit: Amazon Prime
Photo credit: Amazon Prime

One fellow pioneer that Peter ends up counselling is engineer Paul Halloran (Mark Addy) – reuniting Madden with his old Game of Thrones co-star. Yes, it's Robb Stark and Robert Baratheon, together again!

Unfortunately – spoilers! – Addy's character is violently offed in the early-going. So not so different to GoT then.

"It was an absolute dream – I love Mark to pieces," Madden told Digital Spy. "I'm desperately trying to work out a way that we can get him back. Do we do flashbacks?

"I love working with Mark – he's a spectacular actor and he took what was one of the toughest speeches in the pilot, this heartfelt speech about his dead horse, and made it into something absolutely brilliant and compelling."

Photo credit: Amazon Studios
Photo credit: Amazon Studios

Oasis was one of five original pilots released by Amazon Prime Video on March 17, with the streaming service deciding which to take to series based on viewer response.

"It's very, very strange, I've never done anything like this before," Madden said. "It feels very... I don't want to say X Factor-ish but it does feel kind of like that, in a strange way, and I wonder if that's the way that television's going to move forward.

"I don't know if I fully agree that this is the way to do things. The Sopranos bombed in its first series, and the second series didn't do very well either. It was only going into the third that it started to pick up and then it became one of the biggest television shows we've ever seen.

"But it is a really fascinating way of gauging an audience reaction, It gives an opportunity to go back and change certain things, to make Oasis a more dynamic, exciting show."

Photo credit: Amazon Studios
Photo credit: Amazon Studios

If Oasis is picked up for a full first season, Madden says he has a vague idea of what happens next, having been given a "very tentative roadmap" of where the story will go.

"I'm really looking forward to exploring Peter's darker side," he said. "We see him as being very together, very strong – but what we don't see is the huge amount of grief that he's not yet actually connected with.

"He was in prison before he was a chaplain. What happened to him? How did he end up there, and what of those traits are still with him?

"We learn that his wife saved him in lots of ways. If we take her out of the equation and put him on another world, will it all come back with a vengeance, when we're in this very alien landscape, and doesn't have anything to keep him together or on an even keel?"

Oasis is available to stream now exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.


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