(TV SERIES) La Brea Season 1 - An Engaging Sci-fi Drama Series

Few weeks ago I found out about this new series that started to be shown on HBO Go platform which immediately intrigued me. But since it was released an episode a week, I had to wait till it was finally completed before I began binge watching it. With only 10 episodes, I managed to finish it in 1 weekend. So here goes.

Brief Story Line

During a normal day in Los Angeles, Eve (Natalie Zea - Justified TV series etc) was driving her teenaged son Josh (Jack Martin) and Izzy (Zyra Gorecki) to school when suddenly a massive sink hole appeared in La Brea, bringing down buildings, vehicles and lots of people as well. Eve's estranged husband Gavin (Eoin Macken - The Night Shift TV series etc) was shocked but he believed that his family actually survived the catastrophe and tried to convince the government to do a rescue mission.

Meanwhile there were also other victims of the sink hole such as psychiatrist Ty (Chiké Okonkwo), police officer Marybeth (Karina Logue), college student Riley (Veronica St. Clair) and her father Sam (Jon Seda - Chicago P. D. TV series etc), an anthropology student Scott (Rohan Mirchandaney), a mysterious guy Lucas (Josh McKenzie), a young woman Veronica (Lily Santiago) and her younger sister Lilly (Chloe De Los Santos). As Gavin was unable to do the rescue himself, he proposed to assign his best friend Levi (Nicholas Gonzales - The Good Doctor TV series etc) who was a US Air Force pilot.

So what actually caused the sink hole and what happen to the victims? Find them all in this interesting sci-fi series.

End of Brief Story Line

I have been a fan of science fiction series for a very long time. And this one definitely fit into the category due to the appearance of a mysterious massive sink hole in the middle of Los Angeles. This kind of series would need to have a strong start to make it interesting, and I felt it was pretty successful in doing so. It did not take too long for the phenomenon to happen and from then onwards, it was totally intriguing to find out the mystery.

Having a good special effects certainly help making the series entertaining. The effects on certain items were amazing as you can see throughout the whole 10 episodes. For me the sci-fi element and the mystery were some of the factors that made me interested with the series. In addition, some of the characters were interesting as well. Even though they might not have the complexities like in other similar series, but it did give us the curiosity of finding out their background story. Btw, most of the series regulars were unfamiliar to me (except Natalie Zea and Nicholas Gonzales), but generally they did their work adequately. What surprised me though was the fact that their screen time seemed to be quite balance, although obviously some were more favorite than others. 

The series was actually produced by Keshet Studios and Universal Television, but premiered first time on NBC network. So it's not an HBO original, which would explain the standard duration of 41 minutes per episode and the very brief pause in certain scene to provide advertisement. Almost every episode ended with a cliffhanger and that season finale really got me excited for a second season which had been confirmed since last month. If there was no confirmation of renewal, likely I would not have given this series a try. I just hope they would be able to complete the whole story and idea of the series creator David Appelbaum (co-producer of The Mentalist and supervising producer of NCIS: New Orleans for few years). I admired his imagination to create such story from actual location with wonderful historical value.

It has been quite a long time since I found myself to be absorbed in a TV series that I really could not stop watching. Which is why I managed to complete the first season only in 1 day, albeit till late last night. If the series was a novel, this is a real page turner as I really wanted to find out what would happen next. There were even few shocking twists that were pretty mind blowing, especially in the latter episodes. So if you are into sci-fi series with a bit of drama, having good visual effects and some engaging characters with surprising twists, then this one should be entertaining. It might not be as sophisticated or dramatic like the more highly rated sci-fi series in the past, but it is enjoyable enough.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars