War of the Worlds (2020) [Fox]

Posted on April 24, 2020 Updated on August 31, 2020

Contains some mild, general spoilers for the first season

In the run-up to Christmas, the BBC aired its prestige adaptation of HG Wells’ classic 1898 science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. There had been high hopes for it as the first screen version of the story to be set in the source work’s time and English home counties location, but alas the production proved to be deeply flawed and failed in just about every respect, either in its efforts to be a faithful version of Wells’ book or as a bold new reimagining. It was, to put it simply, rather a mess.

As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait for long for another War of the Worlds (note the removal of the definitive article this time around) to come along and sluice the bitter taste of the BBC adaptation’s failure from our mouths, with French production company Studio Canal in association with Fox Networks Group providing a brand new eight-part vision of the venerable tale. I’ll say upfront that Misfits writer Howard Overman’s show is a much stronger dramatic presentation than last year’s dead on arrival effort from the BBC, with some interesting and distinctive elements. However, it has to be said the trade-off for this medium level of success is that any resemblance to the contents of HG Wells’ novel is entirely coincidental.

For one thing, there’s a distinct lack of ‘war’ involved. The first episode depicts the arrival of the aliens in much the same way as Independence Day (with certain similarities to Contact) as the attack is heralded by a mysterious throbbing signal, followed soon after by fireballs falling from the skies which wipe out most of humanity on the spot in something resembling a deadly EMP blast, leaving just a few lucky survivors who happened to have taken sufficient cover in advance. Read the rest of this entry »