Amazing Stories: AppleTV+ Review

3rd September 2020

Amazing Stories is the reboot of the Steven Spielberg series from 1985, once again executive produced by Spielberg himself. An anthology series comprising of five episodes in its first season, each episode takes a very different story with different directors and writers and is now available on AppleTV+.

Each episode takes a light hearted and yet dramatic science fiction and fantasy inspired story. However, if the first episode entitled The Cellar is anything to go by, then Amazing Stories is pleasant enough, but not exactly must-see TV.

Sam (Dylan O’ Brian) and his brother Jake Taylor (Micah Stock) work in construction and spend their time exploring old houses in order to renovate them for new home owners. Sam isn’t really into the work though, preferring to go out on dates than do a hard day’s work.

Then one day while the Taylors are going through one of their houses, Sam finds an old box which holds an old sepia photograph of a beautiful woman in a wedding dress. A storm’s brewing, so Sam and Jake board up the house, but when Sam goes into the basement and sees the barometer pressure going off the scale, he’s transported back in time to 1919 where he meets, Evelyn Porter (Victoria Pedretti) the beautiful woman in the photo.

The Cellar is the pilot episode of Amazing Stories and perhaps a good indication of the style and tone of the series, giving the audience a taste of what to expect. Unfortunately, it feels like the story hasn’t been given enough time (no pun intended) to run its story isn’t given long enough to make much of an impact.

It also feels like the audience may have seen this story before as it feels like a cross between an episode of Quantum Leap, Back to The Future and 80’s time travel romance Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Quite early on it’s evident as to where the story is going and the dramatic turns are done on the turn of a dime, but the ending does at least try to give it one more twist.

However, when this ending comes the audience may wish they’d have watched something more exciting instead.

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