Tuesday 5 November 2019

The Twilight Zone, Season 1 (1959)



I'm not sure The Twilight Zone really needs introduction, given that it has spawned three TV shows (with a fourth on the way), a film, novels, comics and even a theme park ride, but just in case: this is an anthology series in which each episode presents a stand-alone story.  Generally, the leading characters of each entry find themselves dealing with strange or unusual events, and many episodes end with a twist (M Night Shyamalan was probably a fan) or moral.

In terms of genre, The Twilight Zone covers a fair bit of ground: more I think than is commonly supposed.  The supernatural or fantastic elements of many plots might on the face of it mark an individual episode as 'fantasy' or 'science fiction', but I think that's probably letting the set dressing have too much say in the classification.  Would Romeo & Juliet cease to be a romantic tragedy if it was set in space?  I don't believe so, and I think a similar rule applies here.  Just because an episode like "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" has a final denouement where a character literally wills herself into a movie does not obviate the fact that it's at heart a study of one woman's emotional turmoil and dissatisfaction.

So is it good?  Yes, it is.  Not every episode is a home run, of course (and the episode with a baseball setting definitely isn't); that's the nature of anthology shows.  And naturally some of the stories aren't as fresh or innovative today as they were sixty years ago when they first hit TV screens: but that's at least in part because so many other media works have riffed on them.  I don't necessarily love all the reputed "classics" of this season ("The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street", I am looking at you), but I'd be surprised if you didn't find something to like in offerings like "What You Need" or "The Hitch-hiker".  At the very least, I'd recommend tracking down an online list of the best regarded episodes (many of which are from this first season) to selectively sample the show's wares.

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