Ñor is it "Alive!," although that's what the people who watch one trailer and the first episode want you to think.
But one could forgive them for thinking as much, because Showtime deliberately provokes thoughts of both in the trailer and set up. The airplane for a team of young female soccer players crashes into the wilderness, leaving them stranded and hungry. They will eventually run out of food options, and they know it. The specter of starvation haunts them the minute they run out of fresh meat (and we know what the similarly stranded Uruguayan soccer team did to survive in their real life crash in "Alive!").
Similarly, every American high school English student knows what happened to the British boys who set upon each other in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." This series deliberately stirs our memory of Piggy by putting the baby-faced Christina Ricci in oversized glasses and a poodle wig.
In most series, the pay off for the series would be seeing the girls devolve into gladiatorial self governance that results in cannibalism. Each scene would be a lead up to the inevitable grisly cannibalism after the girls turn on each other. However, this isn't that series, not by a long shot. It doesn't build up to a horrific death scene. It tells you that is where it's going in the first episode, and then, slowly and surely, reminds you that there is going to be life for some of the girls after the others are gone.
The series is anchored by the stories of four surviving women and splits the action between what happened 25 years ago around the crash and what is happening now. Different actresses play the characters and women and girls, and they are joined in both timelines by other characters who support the story line.
Does it sound confusing? It isn't, primarily because the two show runners cut their teeth doing "Narcos" and understand how to tell a complex story. They are helped in their storytelling by the uncanny ability of the younger actresses to match style and idiosyncrasies with the adult actresses, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynsky and Tawny Cypress.
The series defies genre. It's horror, mystery, coming of age, romance, and adventure. The acting is fantastic (Christina Ricci is terrifying), and the script as novel as the first season of "Lost."
The show is being released on a weekly basis. As of this writing, it is Christmas 2021 and on Episode 6, but the IMDB movie reviews are full of November reviews claiming to know what is going to happen and criticizing the plot. These have to be troll reviews by people who want attention on IMDB, because they could not have possibly seen the show.
Give the series the same chance the critics (who loved it) did. The first 6 episodes will be worth your while, and we will see what happens after that.
But one could forgive them for thinking as much, because Showtime deliberately provokes thoughts of both in the trailer and set up. The airplane for a team of young female soccer players crashes into the wilderness, leaving them stranded and hungry. They will eventually run out of food options, and they know it. The specter of starvation haunts them the minute they run out of fresh meat (and we know what the similarly stranded Uruguayan soccer team did to survive in their real life crash in "Alive!").
Similarly, every American high school English student knows what happened to the British boys who set upon each other in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." This series deliberately stirs our memory of Piggy by putting the baby-faced Christina Ricci in oversized glasses and a poodle wig.
In most series, the pay off for the series would be seeing the girls devolve into gladiatorial self governance that results in cannibalism. Each scene would be a lead up to the inevitable grisly cannibalism after the girls turn on each other. However, this isn't that series, not by a long shot. It doesn't build up to a horrific death scene. It tells you that is where it's going in the first episode, and then, slowly and surely, reminds you that there is going to be life for some of the girls after the others are gone.
The series is anchored by the stories of four surviving women and splits the action between what happened 25 years ago around the crash and what is happening now. Different actresses play the characters and women and girls, and they are joined in both timelines by other characters who support the story line.
Does it sound confusing? It isn't, primarily because the two show runners cut their teeth doing "Narcos" and understand how to tell a complex story. They are helped in their storytelling by the uncanny ability of the younger actresses to match style and idiosyncrasies with the adult actresses, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynsky and Tawny Cypress.
The series defies genre. It's horror, mystery, coming of age, romance, and adventure. The acting is fantastic (Christina Ricci is terrifying), and the script as novel as the first season of "Lost."
The show is being released on a weekly basis. As of this writing, it is Christmas 2021 and on Episode 6, but the IMDB movie reviews are full of November reviews claiming to know what is going to happen and criticizing the plot. These have to be troll reviews by people who want attention on IMDB, because they could not have possibly seen the show.
Give the series the same chance the critics (who loved it) did. The first 6 episodes will be worth your while, and we will see what happens after that.