The OA is a science-fiction series of sorts but also has touches of fantasy and mysticism wound in. I like the idea behind it all but for the first 2 episodes or so, the story moves extremely slow and I can see why many people would be turned off by this.
The story centers around one major character named Prarie (played by Brit Marling, who is actually a great actor) she disappeared for 7 years and now she is back and she is calling herself the "OA." Her belief in supernatural powers is someone validated by the fact that when she disappeared she was blind, but now she is not. It is kind of silly that no one believes her and she is simply declared insane. If I was a doctor and someone magically got cured of blindness, I might listen to their stories and take them seriously.
The story is an interesting one but the problem that this series has is the same thing that plagues so many other Netflix series. It just takes too damn long to get moving. Almost nothing happens in the first 2 episodes and I only carried on because it has been a while since I saw something sci-fi oriented that was actually good. I am now on episode 3 and I can only hope that they get things moving. Prarie (the OA) claims to be able to open portals to other dimensions and I would really like to see some of that. So far there has barely been any talk about it.
I'm not going to give up on this because it looks like it has real potential. However, I would imagine that 90% of the viewers, particularly those with only a mild interest in sci-fi, would probably switch the show off before the end of episode 1. I'll keep going and report back. For now, I can't really recommend this series because it is actually difficult to stay focused on it because it is a bit boring.