Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Cast: Léa Druker, Gabriel Byrne, Bayo Gbadamosi, Ty Tennant, Pearl Chanda, Paul Gorostidi, Emilie de Preissac, Aaron Heffernan, Ania Sowinski, Adel Bencherif, Pieter Genard, Lukas Haas, Lizzie Brocheré, Molly Windsor, Jack Barton, Michael Marcus, Georgina Rich, Alex Heath, Luke Malby, Florence Bell, Seb Slade, Daisy Maywood.
Aside from the title it shares, there is little to connect the third season of Howard Overman’s War Of The Worlds and that of its more famous namesake, The original novel by the godfather of British Science Fiction, H.G. Wells, and yet it doesn’t stop it from being a tale woven with greater sincerity and fierce drama than almost any adaption of the work, aside from the incredible Jeff Wayne musical extravaganza which is fast approaching its 50th anniversary.
In truth the series was always deviating from the 1898 novel, and in absolute fairness it has worked without any illusion to its more illustrious narrative, so the fact that the third series of War Of The Worlds seems less decisive than the previous two is up for debate; and one that will probably see the action come to a close quicker than expected, even if there is a fourth series in the offering.
The allusion to the belief that humanity’s greatest enemy is itself, is not a new one, and the scope that the narrative of time travel has played in being able to bring such stories to life cannot be ignored, and it does weave its way through the series as a whole with great reliance. Somehow though between the second and third series there is something quelling underneath the action, the scope of the piece has been lost, and whilst that may have something to do with the tightening of cinematic and television production belts during a time of crisis, it also hangs on the drama being consumed…a stop gap between series perhaps, a moment drawn out before the final incalculable loss of life battle.
Despite the feeling of partial neglect, that does not mean that the machinery at the heart of the matter, the depth of acting, the belief in the cinematography, has been scattered to the four winds, indeed Pearl Chanda as Zoe captures the imagination in her role, as does Gabriel Byrne as the grimly determined scientist Bill Ward, and the special effects, the sense of time being erased away by the unnaturally occurring black hole above the Earth, that also adds gravitas to the production.
Lethargy can hit any production, it is a simple fact of life that inertia and consequence play a part in all things, and to that end it must be stated that whilst there is still a gradual slowdown that is noticeable during series three, it is still far and away a greater adaptation than almost any that have taken to the silver screen and beyond.
The world is still here, but at what cost, what have we sown that will come back to haunt us in the decades and centuries ahead, and it is in that question that War Of The Worlds sets its own mark.
Ian D. Hall