EERIE, INDIANA
Even stranger things…
1991-92 AVAILABLE ON DVD
Something spooky was in the air in the ’90s. The debut of Twin Peaks at the start of the decade had opened the door for the weird, the surreal and the unexplained to invade TV screens across the US, leading to the likes of The X-Files, American Gothic, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Baywatch Nights(!) and, of course, Eerie, Indiana.
The brainchild of writer José Rivera and producer Karl Schaefer, Eerie, Indiana follows the adventures of teenager Marshall Teller (Omri Katz), whose family have recently moved to the titular “centre of weirdness for the entire planet”. It’s the kind of place where you might see Bigfoot digging around in your trash, meet a mother who keeps her children young by sealing them in Tupperware, or learn that your life is really a TV series - and you’re about to be written out. Marshall’s biggest problem? Outside of his best friend, Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow), nobody believes him.
“It was the junior X-Files before there was The X-Files,” says Joe Dante, who served as creative consultant on the show. Fresh from helming the subversive Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), the filmmaker also directed five episodes, including the pilot, enabling him to set the show’s cinematic aesthetic, which others would follow.
Typical of Dante’s filmography, the series was also loaded with nods and winks to classic sci-fi and horror films, all of which would fly over the heads of what network bosses at NBC saw as Eerie, Indiana’s target audience. “It was considered a kids’ show, even though it never really was. For us it was an adult show with kid protagonists,” claims series co-creator Schaefer.
Shown at 7pm on Sunday nights opposite CBS’ news and current affairs behemoth 60 Minutes, the show was a hit with critics, but failed to find an audience and was cancelled after just 18 episodes (with one more in the can, though unbroadcast at the time). A repeat run in 1997 fared better and sparked interest in bringing the show back. Instead, the following year saw the release of quickly forgotten spin-off show Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension, a pale imitation of the original.
While rumours of an Eerie, Indiana reboot continue to this day, perhaps the true bearer of the show’s legacy lives on elsewhere. Specifically, Netflix smash Stranger Things, with its young protagonists investigating the uncanny and inexplicable in a small-town setting rife with childhood fears and genre nostalgia. Call it an Eerie coincidence…