Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Steven Yeun, Marika Sila, Patrick Gallagher, Eric Keenleyside, Andrew Kavadas, Gail Maurice, Greg Kinnear, Jordan Peele, Jill Teed, Babak A. Motamed, Adam Stafford, Tanja Dixon-Warren, June B. Wilde, Trevor Lerner.

For anyone who has spent time on the road, back packing round Europe in their gap year, or the more adventurous type who see the Americas and the lands of the East a more defining pull, there will always come a time when you walk into a new town or village, when you get off the bus and stare at your surroundings, there will always one person who views you with suspicion, something in their gut tells them that you are not who you say your are.

You are, after all, only A Traveler, a speck of time in someone else’s back yard, and suspicion will always fall upon the stranger who is present when something terrible happens, when things go awry. However, as The Twilight Zone is apt to do, to turn a situation on its head and make the group of people accusing you turn on themselves, to extradite yourself from the problem whilst looking at all times, the good guy.

Bringing such a show to the small screen takes effort on everybody’s part, and whilst there is always room for the acting fraternity to be given their applause, quite often, and never intentionally, the writers and the director, as well as all those involved, get left out of the praise. That should not be the case this particular episode of The Twilight Zone, as Ana Lily Amirpour’s direction compliments Glen Morgan’s script to the letter, a rare meeting of minds to whom it feels they truly got the understanding of the message of the series.

Underneath A Traveler is a damning criticism of the way we treat the stranger, and yet it also follows the line of trusting our instincts, and as Steven Yeun conveys precise ingratiation to those around him, he also gives off that one signal to one of the officers of the law that sense of disturbance, and the effect, given sharp definition by the writing and direction, is one that rightly gives the audience the creeps, slimy rather than fear, sycophantic smiles for the crowd as he strips them of their own truth.

A decently laid out tale from this latest version of stories based on the premise of Rod Serling’s body of work.

Ian D. Hall