La Brea

It's not often that you happen upon a show that ticks so many boxes. Terrible acting? Tick. SFX that would have looked dodgy in the early 90s? Check. Dialog that would have made Mystery Theatere 3000 hosts shudder? Check. Awful scipt, terrible pacing, tragic set design? Check, check, check. This one has it all.

There are reviews/articles praising the young lead actress Zyra Gorecki's performance and her motivation for portraying an amputee on-screen, but 5 minutes into the pilot episode my wife said, "she's a terrible actress" before walking away. I was thinking exactly the same thing. Shortly thereafter, I was treated to creature special effects that would have been at home in a PlayStation2 game. Then when proceedings moved "to the other side", the set design, acting and pacing reminded me of cheesy 70s Sci-Fi, but with none of the nostalgia to redeem it.

If NBC is looking to compete with the big budget streaming platforms, they have a long way to go. The 52% rating on IMDB is much more applicable than the 80% rating here on TMDB.

[Spoilers]

Actually this is very bad, but somehow they manage to let you skip everytime to the next episode. The overall idea is fine. I like time-travel films/series and this one is different enough than the rest. The acting varies between decent and very bad. The cheesy typical American pro-family vibe ruins it and is even worse than Lost in Space (2018). Nice are the prehistoric (late-Pleistocene) animals, which are quite correct. Although I doubt if those spiders were really that big (large Arthropods are usually found in warmer/tropical areas).

[/Spoilers]