Skeleton Crew is shaping up to be a fun space adventure that taps into the nostalgia of 1980s movies like E.T. and The Goonies. This reviewer is still on the fence.

Although Skeleton Crew gets off to a bumpy start, the new Star Wars series truly launches at the end of the first episode, when four misfit kids find themselves hurtling through “the Barrier” that separates their picture perfect suburban planet from the rest of the wider universe.

Having cannibalised its own stellar legacy to diminishing effect, Star Wars is now throwing hungry eyes at Stephen Spielberg’s ET. The classic Spielbergian scenario in which curious tweenagers cross paths with an alien who can make things float by waving their hands is the central premise of the enjoyably derivative Skelton Crew (Disney +) – with no less a figure than Hollywood’s Jude Law inheriting the role of eccentric intergalactic interloper.