A British nurse travels through time into a mysterious world and the only means of survival is to marry a strapping Scots warrior with a complicated past and a disarming sense of humor.
What checks the female- empowerment box for many is how Clare handles it all: She is a resourceful, plucky and compassionate heroine who wields her 20th-century smarts as a sort of superpower.
Outlander is beautifully shot throughout, which somewhat makes up for some of the early tedium. It may not ever rise to the level of enthralling. But by the second episode, the story at hand is flexing a firmer grip.
Viewers drawn to star-crossed romance are most likely to get absorbed in Outlander, which benefits from beautiful production design - great location work with filming in Scotland.
Always fascinating and often quite odd, mad, and weird, Outlander has the most peculiar mix of gothic horror, swashbuckling adventure, magical fantasy, and romance you're likely to experience on TV.
It was enormously refreshing to see an epic, gruesome fantasy series told from a female perspective, and Balfe maintained a lovely balance of bewilderment at her situation, rational assessment and defiant competence in dealing with it.
