Falling Skies
Entry updated 10 November 2023. Tagged: TV.
US tv series (2011-2015). Dreamworks Television 2011-2013, Amblin Television 2014-2015. Created by Robert Rodat. Producers include Greg Beeman, Rodat, Steven Spielberg, and Graham Yost. Directors include Beeman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan and Fred Toye. Writers include Rodat, Melinda Hsu Taylor and Yost. 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. Two seasons with a total of 52 episodes of 40-43 minutes.
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 as an action hero. The first series ran from 2011 to 2013, the second from 2014 to 2015. [AN/DRL]
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