James Ashley

This is a great pilot, mixing the current trend in nostalgic television (Ms Masel, Perry Mason) with cosmic horror. So far it feels like it might do for pulp novels what the Watchmen series did for comic books — adding a different dimension to a genre we thought we understood. I especially liked that it is neither pandering nor tokenizing. It also uses a light hand in addressing head-on the problem of how fandom deals wIth the dark history of some of the biggest contributors to genre fiction like H P Lovecraft. You enjoy what you can and try to forgive them the rest — like Lovecraft’s problematic virulent racism. If there’s a bigger message, it might be that the same has to be done with the ugliness of American history. The only rule is that you have to shine your light on all the monsters and truly see them for what they are.