Brief Story Line
Few hours after Halloween of 1988, four girls that consisted of the intelligent Tiff (Camryn Jones - Perpetual Grace, LTD TV series etc), the tomboy Mac (Sofia Rosinsky - The Other Side of the Door, Fast Layne TV series etc), the wealthy KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza - Above the Shadows etc) and the new girl Erin (Riley Lai Nelet - Altered Carbon TV series etc) were doing their runs of delivering newspapers to the neighborhood.
However, they were somehow transported in time and were caught in the middle of a war between two factions who had different stand on the time travel. Now the girls must find their way back to their own time while being hunted by a warrior named Prioress (Adina Porter - Outer Banks TV series, American Horror Story anthology series etc).
So what would happen to them? You can find out in the first season of the series.
End of Brief Story Line
The reason I was interested to give this series a try was because it was set in the 1980s (the nicest decade to my personal opinion) with the lead cast that consisted of young girls that reminded me of a very very popular and great series in another platform (albeit they were 4 boys). It also focused on a topic that had always been one of my favorites, time travel. With such combination, obviously I had high hopes of the series and watched it with great anticipation.
Now as I watched the first episode, I was surprised by the quite short duration of less than 40 minutes. But it was sufficient to get me intrigued, especially towards the end of the episode. While continue watching, I thought the story was pretty interesting especially the aftermath of the time travel and the suspense feel surrounding it. However, as the series progressed, I could feel that the focus was not entirely on the intensity but a bit much on the coming of age story of these girls as they saw what it looked like for them in different times. It made me feel that the series was probably more enjoyable if that is the type of thing you are looking for. Personally for me though, I would have liked it better if there were more mysteries, intense moments and suspense.
During the closing credits, I saw that the series was adapted from comics of the same title written by Brian K. Vaughan (notable works included Runaways which had been adapted to TV Series, Ex Machina, Y: The Last Man and few others), and illustrated by Cliff Chiang (illustrator for DC comics such as Green Arrow/Black Canary, Wonder Woman and several others). From what I read, there were plenty of comics issued and this first season was touching just a bit on the surface. There were 8 episodes overall with varying durations between 38 to 56 minutes. The longest was the finale which I thought was very good as it was more suspenseful with some surprises and an ending that made me wished there would be a second season (no news yet of the renewal by the time I wrote this post).
Aside from the 8th episode, I also liked the 5th episode which was my favorite. It was what I was hoping for in this kind of series. Having completed the whole first season, I thought that this was different from what I expected. The 1980s period was not the main focus (obviously since it is a time travel story) and there was very few songs from that time which would bring the nostalgic feeling. In addition, as the focus was more on the story of these girls' life struggle, the war between two factions of time travellers felt only half explored. Oh and do not expect wonderful visual effects in here either as I think the producers opted more on the story. Btw there was the name of Brad Pitt as one of the executive producers alongside other producers including Vaughn and Chiang themselves.
In addition to the 4 lead cast whom I thought performed really well as their characters, there were also important support cast such as Ali Wong (American Housewife TV series etc), Nate Corddry (For All Mankind TV series etc), Sekai Abeni and Jason Mantzoukas (John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum etc). I better let you find out yourselves what characters they played, but they were definitely crucial to the story development.
So if you are looking for a full science fiction series involving time travel, with heavy war between two factions using sophisticated visual effects and focusing on the 1980s period, then this might not be fulfilling. However if you want to see series that follows four young girls as they travelled through time dealing with what happened to themselves while trying to get back to their own time, then this would be a joy. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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