WAR OF THE WORLDS Season Two
Kill Bill: Volume 2
UK Disney+, streaming now
US Epix, finished airing
Writer Howard Overman
Cast Gabriel Byrne, Daisy Edgarng
Jones, Léa Drucker, Mathieu Torloting
Now that War Of The Worlds has introduced time travel to the mix, it could easily change its name to The Time Machine. Okay, the show has sod all to do with HG Wells’s The Time Machine, but it’s also had sod all to do with his The War Of The Worlds so far, so why not?
Season two is a subtly different beast to its predecessor. Season one was The Walking Dead with killer robot dogs, and while there’s
The small-scale human drama is often more compelling
still an element of that (some of the most powerful visuals are still the piles of rotting bodies in deserted streets), season two is more like a gritty version of V. The aliens (or… are they? The revelation about their origins is not much of a surprise) are now fully-fledged characters rather than a faceless threat, intent on killing scientist Bill Ward (Gabriel Byrne) before he creates a killer virus. The high-concept sci-fi content also ramps up, with multiverses and time loops.
It all gets a bit silly, really, but the grim tone, emotive cinematography and committed acting half-convince you there’s something deeper going on. Certainly the small-scale human drama is often more compelling. Creepy French kid Sacha makes a superb boo-hiss race traitor, and a number of characters have to weigh up whether the needs of the family outweigh the needs of the many. It ends with an audacious reset button that’s both annoyingly trite and intriguingly messy in equal measure, promising a very different season three. Dave Golder
In the season finale the robot quadrupeds build a pile of bodies in front of Tate Modern. Are they after the Turner Prize?