Tales From the Darkside

Everyone remembers the Twilight Zone. Nobody remembers the also rans. There were many once, but tv has not been too kind lately to tv anthologies. That's a shame. There's a lot of good source material out there for adaption and a lot of young talent that need work. Seems a perfect combination. Until it does come back, I was looking at one of the also rans. "Tales from the Darkside."

There's no real back story here. No personable Ron Serling giving a little speil at the beginning. A narrator gives us the skinny that the world is not half as bright as we think, and there are things in the dark. The visuals are not very bone chilling. In fact, without the music and narration it looks like a pretty day in the woods with really bad computer fx. Not really a good sign for the series and mostly it holds true. Over all the show is marred by production values hell. The joy of these shows though is that there are usually some gems in the rough. There was a good episode with Kareem Abdul Jabar as a genie, another with Harry Anderson from Night Court, and a very fine episode called "A case of the Stubborns" about a grandfather who won't admit he's dead yet.

It's a shame that the show as a whole couldn't pull it together. It's not unexpected though when you see George Romero was involved in the project. He's a likeable enough person, but like Stan Lee he's given way more props by the fan boy league than he really deserves at this point.
Still, this beats all to hell those damn "infomercials," slap chop that tv!