On Saturday’s in August, ABC will be running an interesting new science fiction anthology series:
A 52-year-old man — an overworked man, a man of words — receives an advance copy of an upcoming science fiction series from ABC. Warily, he fires up the DVD player, expecting to see into the future. But instead, he is transported into the past, into the 1950s and ’60s, into a time when television talked and talked and talked.
Next stop, not the Twilight Zone. But it might as well be.
The show at hand is “Masters of Science Fiction,” a limited series of adaptations of short stories, offered in August by ABC.
In some ways, this is pretty amazing stuff: material from top-flight authors like Robert Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, directed by well-known directors like Mark Rydell (”On Golden Pond”) and Michael Tolkin (”The Player”), with actors like Sam Waterston, Judy Davis, Brian Dennehy, Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell.
On the other hand, the series will be broadcast in the dead of summer on Saturday nights, suggesting that the network sees its likely audience as pudgy misfits in “Star Trek” costumes, their vintage plastic phasars set for “stun.”
Two of the six shows produced by Starz Media (also the creators of Showtime’s “Masters of Horror” anthology series) will not be broadcast by ABC at all — they and the rest of the shows are targeted for DVDs, and for showings overseas.
This looks interesting, and will definitely be on my TiVo To Do List.
