I dimly remember when this showed premiered. I looked at it once or twice at the time, found it dull, then forgot about it. Decades later, I rediscovered it on cable TV in marathon format, and thus gave it another try.
What a revelation. It's true that one sees things through new eyes many years after the fact. For my own part, I grew up thinking Ray Bradbury was a great science fiction writer, largely because everyone else said so. But watching his series makes me realize he wasn't a very good writer by my definition, at all.
The series is often somewhat autobiographical - time after time, an episode will revolve around an excruciatingly unattractive, geeky boy (usually tricked out in period-incorrect '30s duds), who longs to be a writer...sound familiar? The ugly boy is universally despised by the attractive, cool boys on the block, who heckle and bully him relentlessly. Invariably, some Cover Girl type female character gives the ugly geeky boy the attention and adulation he craves, and at the fadeout he winds up with a highly improbable upper hand over the attractive, cool guys who hate him.
This recurrent theme in Bradbury's episodes is an epiphany insight into his own youth. But it's not the worst part of the show.
The worst aspect of this series is the dialogue. Repetitive themes aside, Bradbury's dialogue is improbable at best -- wordy, flowery and inane at worst. Time and time again I find myself shaking my head as I watch, saying "nobody talks like that. Nobody EVER talked like that!"
Apparently, even as an adult, Bradbury's real life dorkiness isolated him from real people enough that he couldn't get the hang of how people really talk and act. There are two types of dialogue: the kind that reads well on the written page, and the kind that sounds natural when delivered by an actor. They're not always the same thing - a simple lesson Bradbury clearly never mastered.
Some may regard this series as the poor man's "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery." To me, it's closer to an amateur film festival experiment with the wrong writer heading the project. Possibly viewers whose experience parallels that of Bradbury's may get something out of this show - but for everyone else, this is merely a time-honored disappointment.
What a revelation. It's true that one sees things through new eyes many years after the fact. For my own part, I grew up thinking Ray Bradbury was a great science fiction writer, largely because everyone else said so. But watching his series makes me realize he wasn't a very good writer by my definition, at all.
The series is often somewhat autobiographical - time after time, an episode will revolve around an excruciatingly unattractive, geeky boy (usually tricked out in period-incorrect '30s duds), who longs to be a writer...sound familiar? The ugly boy is universally despised by the attractive, cool boys on the block, who heckle and bully him relentlessly. Invariably, some Cover Girl type female character gives the ugly geeky boy the attention and adulation he craves, and at the fadeout he winds up with a highly improbable upper hand over the attractive, cool guys who hate him.
This recurrent theme in Bradbury's episodes is an epiphany insight into his own youth. But it's not the worst part of the show.
The worst aspect of this series is the dialogue. Repetitive themes aside, Bradbury's dialogue is improbable at best -- wordy, flowery and inane at worst. Time and time again I find myself shaking my head as I watch, saying "nobody talks like that. Nobody EVER talked like that!"
Apparently, even as an adult, Bradbury's real life dorkiness isolated him from real people enough that he couldn't get the hang of how people really talk and act. There are two types of dialogue: the kind that reads well on the written page, and the kind that sounds natural when delivered by an actor. They're not always the same thing - a simple lesson Bradbury clearly never mastered.
Some may regard this series as the poor man's "Twilight Zone" or "Night Gallery." To me, it's closer to an amateur film festival experiment with the wrong writer heading the project. Possibly viewers whose experience parallels that of Bradbury's may get something out of this show - but for everyone else, this is merely a time-honored disappointment.