The reputation he’d garnered from “Requiem” and other scripts gave Serling the calling card he needed to get his own series on the air. His most notable pre- Twilight Zone script was “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” the story of a washed-up boxer produced in 1956 for Playhouse 90, perhaps the most acclaimed drama of the era. His time in the trenches on the other anthology dramas of the 1950s gave him a strong sense of how to craft a single-episode story that would pack a powerful punch. Serling was a socially conscious writer and a genius at plotting. But Serling’s idea requires so little modernizing that he remains the credited creator. This speaks to the sturdiness of Serling’s original conception for the show: Typically, when a TV series is updated for a new era, the people doing the updating get “developed by” credits, while the original creators get “based on the series created by” credits. The show’s first narrator was Rod Serling, the creator of the series, who is still credited as its sole creator for the 2019 version. The only permanent occupant of the Twilight Zone is a narrator who appears near the start and at the end of every episode to offer a few musings about its tale. But they all take place in the titular region, a place where wishes are granted at a terrible cost, where monsters are plentiful, and where moral lessons are doled out by the bushel. Let’s start with the basics: The Twilight Zone is an anthology series - meaning every episode tells a new story featuring new characters. What to expect when you find yourself in The Twilight Zone Expect to meet a strange man who narrates your ironic fate, for one. Like the original, not everything the new Twilight Zone tries will work, but it just might get under your skin. Which is to say it might be the perfect reboot of this time-honored concept. (So far, he hasn’t written or directed any of the new episodes, of which I’ve seen the first four.) The new series is hit or miss, but also spooky, moody, and reflective of our current cultural climate. In 2002, the defunct UPN network launched another reboot (it only lasted a season).Īnd now The Twilight Zone is back for the streaming age, in a new version produced for CBS All Access and hosted and executive-produced by Jordan Peele. The 1980s saw both a movie - with segments directed by Steven Spielberg and George Miller, among others - and a three-season reboot. What’s more, every generation eventually gets its own spin on the series. (It’s also currently available on all major streaming services.) The show’s critical acclaim and influence is unparalleled, and its spooky, black-and-white charms hold up shockingly well for something that is literally turning 60 this fall. The Twilight Zone has run (and run and run and run) continuously since it debuted, somewhere on the TV dial. Still other significant series, like the Western Gunsmoke, faded from view as cultural tastes shifted. The 1950s were widely considered the golden age of TV drama for years, but many of the programs that contributed to that reputation have been lost to the mists of time, because they weren’t properly preserved. An added bonus are the guest appearances by many young actors who later became major stars, including Robert Redford, William Shatner, and Martin Landau.5 episodes that prove The Twilight Zone is one of the scariest shows ever made Some were set in the past, some in the future, some in space, some in the then-contemporary era of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but all of them ended with a surprising twist that always managed to shed some light on the human condition. Because each episode was entirely self-contained, these 30-minute morality plays covered an amazing amount of ground. The creation of legendary writer Rod Serling, who also introduced every episode, The Twilight Zone was designed to tweak viewers' notions of reality and present issues from a new, and usually unexpected, perspective. Anything can happen in THE TWILIGHT ZONE: People may actually be aliens, and the characters you thought were aliens may turn out to be human beautiful people turn out to be ugly and the characters you're sure are crazy turn out to be the only ones who actually know what's going on.
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