- Fox
- Matt Dillon and Juliette Lewis in a strange land
This second golden age of television we’re living in is cool and all, but I’m especially excited about the resurgence of the miniseries. As shows become more cinematic, it makes more sense for them to achieve an arc during the course of a single digestible season. Two of the best things on TV last year—the first season of True Detective and HBO’s four-parter Olive Kitteridge—were effectively miniseries. Spending seven often frustrating years watching something like Mad Men build to fruition is satisfying (although I think part of the satisfaction is self-congratulatory—we stuck it out!). Still, there’s something to be said for the vision required to tell a story in a predetermined number of episodes.
It’s creepy and bleak in all the right ways, which should appeal to people who pine for Twin Peaks. Certain things even seem like homages, like when Juliette Lewis’s character hands Ethan a cryptic note that says, “There are no crickets in Wayward Pines,” I immediately thought: “The owls are not what they seem.” But ultimately it lacks the sort of anarchistic disregard for reality that made Peaks so wonderfully troubling. But, the ten-episode time line makes it seem infinitely less daunting.
