4pm, BBC One/ STV
After a long absence, The Twilight Zone returns with one of the most ambitious, expensive and controversial productions in broadcast history. Sci-fi writers have dabbled often with alternative history stories – among the most common is the “What If The Nazis Had Won The Second World War” setting – but this huge interactive virtual reality project, which will unfold on TV, in the press, and on Twitter over the next four years, sets out to build an ongoing alternative present. The story begins in a nightmarish version of 2017 in which huge sections of the US electorate have somehow been duped into voting to make Donald Trump president. It sounds far-fetched, and it is, but as it goes on it becomes more and more chillingly plausible. Today’s feature-length opener concentrates on the gaudy inauguration of President Trump, and the stirrings of protest and despair surrounding the ceremony, while pundits speculate gravely on what lies ahead. It’s a flawed piece, but a disturbing glimpse of the horrors we could stumble into, if we’re not careful.
Written by Damien Love, published in the Scotland Herald, 14 Jan 2017.
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Randy Cassingham is best known as the creator of This is True®, the oldest entertainment feature on the Internet: it has been running weekly by email subscription since early 1994. It is social commentary using weird news as its vehicle so it’s fun to read. Click here for the site — basic subscriptions are free.
Comments? Sorry: Facebook retired their commenting system (they didn’t even bother to alert me). Just as well, I suppose, but sadly there is no way to recover the many hundreds of comments made on this site. Lesson learned: never rely on someone else’s site for prime functions, especially “social media”!
Since this site is mostly retired now (maximum of one new post per month), I did decide that since all comments are now gone that I would not attempt to install any new commenting system. -rc
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