Falling Skies
Entry updated 8 April 2019. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2011-current). Created by Robert Rodat. Producers include Rodat, Steven Spielberg, Greg Beeman, and Graham Yost. Directors include Beeman, Fred Toye, and Sergio Mimica-Gezzan. Writers include Rodat, Yost, and Melinda Hsu Taylor. Cast includes Noah Wyle as Tom Mason, Will Patton as Captain Weaver, Moon Bloodgood as Dr Anne Glass, Peter Shinkoda as Dai, Mpho Koaho as Anthony, Seychelle Gabriel as Lourdes, Sarah Carter as Margaret, Drew Roy as Hal Mason, Connor Jessup as Ben Mason, and Maxim Knight as Matt Mason. Ten one-hour episodes aired so far.
Despite obvious similarities to the revamped Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), this series – in which Alien invaders overrun Earth and kill most of its inhabitants, and a small group of soldiers and civilian refugees struggles to survive and fight back – owes more to producer Spielberg's 2005 film adaptation of H G Wells's War of the Worlds, both in its construction of the aliens and in its focus on a single father fighting to ensure his children's survival. The result is a solidly entertaining, if occasionally simplistic, Future War story, whose individual episodes are centred on "missions" carried out by the anti-alien resistance. As a history professor turned soldier, Wyle is the show's greatest asset, at once soulful and determined, and equally convincing as a thoughtful man worried about the kind of world his children will grow up in and an action hero. The series has already been renewed for a second season, to air in 2012. [AN]
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