Sense8: bold, barefaced, contemporary sci-fi with eight leads, who suddenly find themselves with the ability to hop in and out of each other’s lives and minds at will. What else could bring together an Icelandic DJ, a Chicago police officer, a South Korean kickboxer, a gay Mexican actor, a Nairobi matatu driver, a trans woman hacker from San Francisco, an Indian scientist and a German safecracker under the supervision of the Wachowskis (The Matrix, Jupiter Ascending) and collaborator J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5), notorious for out-there premises and convoluted plotlines? It’s one of the messier, more daring, and most underrated entries into the canon of web television series.

Or at least it was: Sense8 met an untimely end at the hands of a bloodthirsty Netflix. After previously rarely cancelling any of its original programming, it has in recent weeks also cancelled Baz Luhrmann’s Seventies hip-hop musical drama The Get Down. Frustratingly, there’s been no clear explanation for the cancellation. Some fans campaigned for renewal, or at least a clear answer, on social media platforms and a petition with upwards of half a million signatures, proving that even if audiences were smaller than Netflix required, they were passionate. There were encouraging signs during its run; it had international appeal, was praised for its LGBT characters, and reportedly stirred 70% of viewers who reached the third episode to watch and rewatch entire seasons. Nevertheless, a little digging makes a deduction possible. The series’ big budget, its dozen-country filming schedule and complex production, when combined with any drop in viewership (though Netflix doesn’t release viewing figures, there were two years between the first and second seasons) may have revealed Netflix, despite its apparent aspiration to ‘risky’ programming, had bitten off more than it could chew.

Unable to stomach the creative endeavours of one of its most diverse projects, Sense8’s cancellation remains a travesty. Where will I go now for my regular dose of melodramatic Lito (Miguel Ángel Silvestre) sobbing on hotel beds while a stoic Sun Bak (Doona Bae) tells him to, essentially, cop on? Why were we denied the chance to see a wedding for Nomi (Jamie Clayton), further resolution for Capheus (Toby Onwumere), or some respite for Will (Brian J. Smith) and Riley (Tuppence Middleton)? Where else will I find a love story as pining as that of Berlin bad boy Wolfgang (Max Remelt) and capable independent woman Kala (Tina Desai), who, by the way, can improvise bombs from just the contents of the cupboard under the sink and/or Sun’s bra? And most importantly, where will I find another show that so emphases its heroes and their infinite variety of relationships as complements, as opposites (as Lito remarks of Sun, “She’s not crying like I’m not screaming”), as friends, as flawed people?

The cluster encountered requisite enemies, allies and a mysterious organisation bent on their destruction, but honestly, in this show, plot is really just a bit on the side. Pace and jeopardy barge into most episodes (usually an excuse to bandy about pseudo-scientific terms or punch someone in the face) but one can’t help feeling that plot in Sense8 is like an unwanted ex at a wedding: nobody’s quite sure why they were invited, they’ve deadened the chemistry you had going with the hot waiter, and they generally show up just to ruin the party. Even if you come for the concept, you stay with Sense8 for the characters. Just one or two of them would have taken up entire series by themselves elsewhere. The depth and complexity of the core cast is astonishing. They’re not straightforward people, and the show’s creators like to put them through the ringer. It’s the individual storylines, and how they connect, that matter.

It’s a demanding, detailed viewing experience. Not only does it not wait for you to catch up, it doesn’t seem to care if you’re used to watching television with only half an eye on the screen; it assumes, and requires, your attention. This has much to do with the series’ cinematography, which specialised in spectacular colour and contrast. Making the most of superb locations, there are some really breath-taking shots, from fantastic framing and eye-catching angles to hectic crowds and blood-orange sunsets. By series two they had the near-instantaneous movement of characters out of their own surrounds and into those of their cluster companions – known as ‘visits’ – down to a cinematic art. There were no hokey visual effects or ‘beam me up, Scotty’ impersonations here; only the glide of the camera, whether in clever editing, a quick cut away or a sashay past a character from behind whom there seamlessly appeared up to seven other people, perfectly aligned and wearing, if often less-than-ideal clothes, then at least murderous expressions.

And the action sequences — oh, the action sequences. The bread-and-butter of an already visually strong show, brutal but exquisite fight choreography allows the cast to essentially take each other’s place in hand-to-hand combat. You just haven’t lived until you’ve watched a Seoul businesswoman turned wanted criminal chasing her no-good brother’s fleeing car, on a motorbike driven by a matatu driver, before a hardened German criminal swings a crowbar through the front passenger window.

Of course, Sense8 had its flaws; it takes time to build, the dialogue can be hammy, the accents are a bit dodgy, and there’s an occasional lack of logic to some of the twists. Also, make no mistake, Sense8 is dark. The first episode opens with the death of the cluster’s ‘mother’ after she psychically ‘births’ or links them on a decrepit, dimly-lit church floor, and it’s rare that any subsequent episode doesn’t touch on a similar tone. Characters come face-to-face with discrimination, homophobia, loss, recurrent violence, and various criminal underworlds. Indeed, several main characters are criminals (ahem, Wolfgang) or end up in prison (Sun, for a crime she didn’t commit). Yet it becomes clear that in Sense8, anti-heroes can find some kind of redemption in being part of some larger, ragtag whole.

This is because Sense8 was also joyous, and at its best, a vibrant celebration of discovery, togetherness, passion, acceptance and human relationships. The wild dance-montage birthday-celebration sequence of its Christmas special is a particular favourite. There are intense highs alongside its lows, because of course the only way to convincingly tell a modern story about eight vastly different adults becoming psychically linked would be for it to be brazen, bombastic, and even over-budget. It’s the kind thing you have to watch wholeheartedly, or not at all. The audacity of its storytelling – that it dares to tell of a world where strangers find themselves willing to acknowledge and help and love one another – is something science fiction sorely needed, and in many ways, still needs.

Maybe it was always going to be bright and beautiful and brief, but I only wish Sense8 could have gone out with a bang (preferably a third series or one-off feature-length episode) that would have matched the series’ insane, genre defying standards.