The Lazarus Project, Season Two, on TNT

Sure, you could call George Addo a mass murderer, but seriously, it depends on the context. Granted, he shot a bunch of people and deliberately caused a nuclear war that exterminated all life on the planet, but he knew his boss at the Lazarus Project would turn back time to the nearest reset point to undo it all. Even though Addo admits to a few lapses in judgement, it is hard for his old colleagues to trust him again. Unfortunately, things will get so bad, they will need him anyway in season two of creator-writer Joe Barton’s The Lazarus Project, which premieres tomorrow on TNT.

The Lazarus agents are not time-travelers. They just consciously relive certain periods of time until they figure out how to save the world. Actual time-travel is something their boss Elisabeth “Wes” Wesley wanted to prevent. Unfortunately, the renegade Time-Break Initiative managed to build a working time machine, completing the work of Dr. Kitty Gray, who died in a mysterious laboratory fire back in the 2010s. They just didn’t quite get it right.

Consequently, they opened-up a black hole that is literally fraying the fabric of time. Unless they can fix the problem, the Lazarus Project will be stuck in a decaying time-loop, until time ends for good. Rather awkwardly, Addo must repeatedly face Shiv Reddy immediately after having shot him. He keeps saving his life, with the help of his EMT neighbor, whom Addo must then kill over and over again.

Obviously, Addo cannot blame Reddy for being annoyed with him. What hurts is getting dumped by his wife (or girlfriend, depending on the reset) Sarah dumping him, after he literally blew-up the world to save her. To explain himself, Addo gives her the time-reset-awareness drug, but that rather leaves her feelings towards him even more confused. Regardless, they need to find someone who understands time-travel, but someone is killing all of Dr. Gray’s old colleagues.

Arguably, Lazarus Project is the best-written new science fiction currently releasing new episodes, but hardly anyone in the U.S. seems to be talking about it. In the first season, Barton regularly used the resets to completely upend the narrative. For season two, he ups the ante with legit time-travel, but the frequent time resets still apply. It almost gets farcical as future characters keep re-encountering their past selves, or vice versa, but the [barely] controlled chaos is a blast. Frankly, every darned thing Barton keeps springing on viewers is exactly the stuff sf fans love, so why is there so little buzz for the series?

Paapa Essiedu is just as good playing Addo in season two as he was in the first season, or maybe even better. It is hard to think of a series protagonist who messes so badly and so often, yet we still root for him. He also faces a really dark, existential challenge this time around. Similarly, Rudi Dharmalingam is the heart and soul of season two, getting shot in the chest at the start of most episodes and getting steadily crankier as each reset plays out.

The Lazarus Project, on TNT

It is sort of like Groundhog Day all over again, but George Addo’s new colleagues are doing it deliberately, at least until they get things right. That is their job at the super-secret agency known as Lazarus. Whenever the civilized world faces an extinction level event, they rewind time back to the last July 1^st, so they can fix things. That causes a lot of confusion for Addo when he starts to remember what was rewound in creator-writer Joe Barton’s The Lazarus Project, which premieres tomorrow night on TNT.

At first, Addo was just a modestly hip British app developer on the brink of big-time financial success. He married his girlfriend Sarah Leigh, but as they settled down to live happily ever after, a virulent plague started killing everyone on the planet. Then Addo woke up and it was July 1^st, as if the last six months never happened.

Of course, Addo tries to warn the world of what is coming, but everyone assumes he is crazy—except the mysterious Archie. She tells him where to meet her if he remembers the next time it happens, which indeed it does. It turns out most Lazarus agents need to be dosed with their memory drug before they can recall past time resets. However, Addo is one of the few “mutants” that have developed the talent on their own. His new moody colleague Shiv Reddy is another.

Fortunately, Lazarus developed a sufficient vaccine for Covid-20, or whatever it was. (Anyone who was suspicious about how quickly the last Covid vaccine was developed—here’s your answer.) The bad news is a particularly massive nuclear bomb nicknamed “Big Boy” has been stolen. The worse news is the apparent involvement of Dennis Rebrov, a former Lazarus agent who turned against the agency. He is now determined to see the world burn, which sounds inexplicably nihilistic, but he has his reasons.

In fact, many of the character-establishing flashbacks are among the best scenes in Lazarus Project. Barton (whose screenwriting credits include Ritual and Encounter) has a knack for character-driven sf. He largely punts when it comes to credible scientific explanations, but so be it. He more than compensates for a lack of Doctor Who-worthy doublespeak with his one-darned-thing-after-another plot twists. Plus, he and the producers deserve credit for an additional, complicating villain they reveal in episode seven. Here’s a hint: they are committing genocide in Xinjiang.

Barton and series directors Marco Kreuzpaintner (episodes one to four), Laura Scrivano (five and six), and Akaash Meeda (seven and eight) keep viewers hooked, while radically shifting our responses to Addo. He is clearly the protagonist, but the demarcation between heroes and villains in Lazarus Project is a subtle and shifting line.

Silverpoint, on BYUtv

Kids vanish from camps all the time in TV series and movies (looking at you Camp Crystal Lake). The weirdly similar sounding Camp Silverpoint is a little different. Four kids reportedly disappeared in the nearby woods twenty-five years ago, before Bea’s parents, Daniel and Steph, established their summer camp. Every year, they sternly insist the campers never venture outside the perimeter fence. Of course, that is where the group of camp misfits finds the “artefact” that causes all the chaos in creator Lee Walters’ 13-episode Silverpoint, which premieres on BYUtv today.

Kaz is a rebellious foster kid, who tries to run away from Silverpoint. Not wanting to get in trouble, the rest of her “Dragonfly Tribe” follow after her. Louis is the sci-fi geek. Kaz is the pudgy South Asian kid and Meg is scared of everything. When they catch up with Kaz, they stumble over the thing. First, they pick up on the energy that seems to surround it. Then they discover it has the power to transmit matter.

Despite their issues and mistrust, they are all sufficiently intrigued to agree they will revisit and study the artefact. They are all acting so weird, Bea starts to suspect they are up to something. It is not easy being the daughter of the camp counselors. Nevertheless, she has gotten close to several returning campers. Unfortunately, she just discovered her friend Alice has been secretly hooking up with Finn, her not so-secret crush. As a result, she might be in the mood for a new circle of friends, like the clearly smitten Louis. However, the Dragonflies are determined to keep the artefact a secret between themselves, especially when they start experimenting with its matter transference. Unfortunately, they are not the only ones keeping an eye on the thing.

If a lot of sf fans had seen Silverpoint when they were twelve, it probably would have been their favorite show. It is still possible to watch Silverpoint a vicariously appreciate its youthful sense of camaraderie and mystery. Waters and a battery of co-writers smoothly incorporate a whole lot of genre motifs, including Men in Black, “big dumb objects,” time travel, “the Matrix,” and matter transference in a brisk, engaging narrative.

Each half-hour (if that) episode advances the story considerably and ends in a cliffhanger, while still nicely developing nearly dozen characters. It is definitely economical story-telling. A few of the visual effects are also economical, in the wrong kind of way, but for older viewers, that gives it further nostalgic appeal (remember, the BBC original conceived Doctor Who as a children’s show).

Tatami Time Machine Blues, on Hulu

In the Quantum Leap series, neither Sam Beckett or Ben Song worries too much about time paradoxes. Changing history is their mission. However, these Kyoto college students are more familiar with time travel science fiction that argues any change in the past could potentially destroy the present as we know it. Unfortunately, they remember all that butterfly-effect jazz after they start fooling around with the time machine they discover in their dorm. Putting the time travel tooth paste back in the tube is tricky prospect in the six-episode anime series Tatami Time Machine Blues, directed by Shingo Natsumi, which premieres today on Hulu.

Anime fans might remember how luckless Senpai pined for “The Girl with Black Hair” in Masaki Yuasa’s The Night is Short, Walk on Girl. It turns out her name is Akashi. He hasn’t really asked her out yet, but he sees her regularly when she visits residents of his “tatami” dorm. Much to his dismay, Akashi has become a disciple of Higuchi, an eternal slacker-student, along with Senpai’s nemesis, Ozu.

Described as a half-demon-half-student, Ozu loves to torment Senpai, but he rather irks everyone when he damages the remote control to Senpai’s air conditioner, the only working unit in the housing complex. The next day, when they students discover a working time machine hidden in the closet, the logically decide to travel back in time to save the remote (the only way to turn it on). However, the more they think about it, the more they realize they might be causing a space-time continuum disaster. To prevent catastrophe, they must travel back in time again, which inevitably leads to even more complications, and so on.

Makoto Ueda’s adaption of Tomihiko Morimi’s play (which was a sequel to his novel The Tatami Galaxy) is a very clever micro-time travel romp, in the spirit of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, while retaining the neurotic humanism of Walk on Girl. It is sweet, smart, and often quite funny. The animation is not quite as vibrantly colorful as Yuasa’s film, but it is still lively and distinctive, while the character design is largely consistent.

Paper Girls, on Prime

Remember how great the future looked in 1988? The music and movies were consistently fun and George H.W. Bush was poised to be elected president in a veritable landslide. So, how did the 2010s and 2020s turn out so badly? Maybe four newspaper deliverers will find out. They are about to be swept into a time-war in Stephany Folsom’s 8-episode Paper Girls, based on Brian K. Vaughan’s comics, which premieres today on Prime Video.

It is the morning after Halloween (but not for long), when many of the drunken teenaged troublemakers are still roaming the streets. Erin Tieng picked a heck of a first day to start her paper route. Tiffany Quilkin, a savvier paper girl helps show her the ropes. Soon, they meet up with tough-talking Mac Coyle and preppy-ish KJ Brandman, forming a temporary alliance to finish their deliveries together. However, the drunken bullies are not the only ones prowling around their suburban Cleveland neighborhood.

Fatefully, the four girls are caught up in a skirmish between future time-traveling revolutionaries, the STF (Standard Time Fighters), who want to prevent all the bad things from happening, and the “Old Watch,” the reactionaries fighting to protect their privileged positions (and maybe the integrity of the whole space-time continuum dealio). Disoriented after traveling through a worm-hole, the girls decide to hide out at Tieng’s home. They find she is still living there, but she did not turn out how the twelve-year-old would have hoped. As they navigate the future, other girls learn revelations about themselves from family members and in some cases, their future selves.

Folsom’s adaptation of Vaughan’s comics features some pretty intriguing time-travel twists. It is somewhat unusual to hear the old arguments against altering history so casually dismissed, but let’s be honest. The truth is the real, old-school Doctor Who would probably agree with the Old Watch. Nevertheless, the 1980s nostalgia always works and despite some themes of sexuality (brought on by observations of the girls future’s selves), Paper Girls is not annoyingly woke. In fact, the way Ronald Reagan acts as a sort of spirit guide for Tieng is kind of clever.

The battery of four directors (all veterans of episodic drama) keep action rolling along at a brisk pace. The generally shorter episode length (mostly around forty minutes) makes Paper Girls highly bingeable. However, it might be a mistake to end the first season without a greater sense of resolution. After all, it could suffer the same fate as Prime’s cancelled Night Sky (which is also a pretty good show, but we’ll never know its ultimate secrets).

Shining Girls, on Apple TV+

The immortal body-possessing serial killer in Fallen often teased Denzel Washington by humming “Time is on My Side.” That is even more true for this killer. He always knows what his victims will do, because he already watched them do it. Kirby Mazrachi was the one victim who lived to report it. Her name was different then, but she legal changed it. That was the only alteration to her reality that she initiated. Somehow, she is linked to her time-traveling stalker in Silka Luisa’s eight-episode Shining Girls, adapted from Lauren Beukes’ novel, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

Mazrachi constantly writes the details of her life in a notebook, because they frequently change. One day, she lives with her rocker mother Rachel, and then suddenly they are estranged. Her desk in the basement research department of The Chicago Sun-Times constantly moves on her. Sometimes she has a dog named Grendel, other times it is a cat. The disorienting phenomenon started after she survived the vicious slasher attack.

Obviously, Mazrachi has never been able to put the nightmare behind her, so when another woman is killed under similar circumstances, she starts investigating. Reluctantly, she becomes a source for Dan Velazquez, an alcoholic reporter at the paper. Together, they discover an inexplicable pattern. Objects found at the crime scenes link several unsolved homicides over a span of decades, even though some of those items refer to places and events that did not happen yet. Mazrachi had hers too—a matchbook for a non-existent bar.

Shining Girls is an example of the sort of book that could only really be properly adapted during the current streaming boom. Luisa takes the time to let us experience multiple shifts in Mazrachi’s reality, which pays-off later when viewers see the implications of those shifts. Although the time travel itself is basically a fantastical device rather than something with a science fictional explanation, Shining Girls still represents some of the smartest and most character-driven time travel programming, since Needle in a Timestack.

Elisabeth Moss is terrific as Mazrachi. She is credible and compelling freaking-out, without visibly freaking-out, while also struggling to take charge of her shifting reality. Wagner Moura is also entertainingly grungy and boozy as Velazquez (who now happens to be Brazilian in the series, you can even see him wearing an Os Mutantes t-shirt).

Timewasters, Season One

If time-travel were an option, jazz fans would definitely be tempted to go back to hear the original greats. In the late 20s, you could hear Ellington in New York and Armstrong in New Orleans, but London would not be so interesting, unless you are crazy about Ray Noble (he wrote “The Very Thought of You”). Nevertheless, that is where a scuffling and bickering modern-day jazz combo finds themselves in season one of creator-co-writer-co-star Daniel Lawrence Taylor’s Timewasters, which premieres tomorrow on the IMDb app.

There is not much rhythm in Nick Walton’s quartet—no bass or piano, just his caustic little sister Lauren on drums. He claims to be the leader and plays trumpet, with his mates Jason and Horace on tenor and trombone, respectively. Obviously, the former is the ladies man, while the latter is the goofy one. One fateful day, the irate fiancé of one of Jason’s conquests chases the quartet into a urine-stained lift (that’s British for elevator) that really happens to be a time machine operated by “Homeless Pete.” The amazed musicians think they have found temporary sanctuary in the past, but the jealous lover follows their trail, right before the lift goes on the fritz.

Fortunately, the musicians first find a gig playing for rich and vapid Victoria and her socially awkward twin brother Ralph. Subsequently, they live with and off the twins, who take a shine to Jason and Lauren. Much to Walton’s regret, they never encounter any famous musicians during the first season, but they have their fair share of misadventures and cause no end of chaos.

Timewasters is pretty much a straight-up sitcom, but it is a well-written one. Taylor and co-writer Barunka O’Shaughnessy maintain a razor-sharp attitude and a steady 4/4 drumbeat of punchlines. Jazz fans might be disappointed that they are not a heck of a lot of musical references, but it is obviously intended for a more general audience. However, Taylor and company still manage satirize the racial attitudes of the era in ways that are smart and piercing, without belaboring their points.

Wonderland, on MHz Choice

Sometimes, it isn't just the music. We miss the clubs themselves once they are gone, so we want to recreate them (and the memories they facilitated). We realize this only too well now in New York, after news of the Jazz Standard’s closing. Hopefully, they can successfully relaunch themselves in the future. Tony Beliani never lived to meet his son, but Beliani junior still tried to recreate his father’s swinging 1960 Biarritz nightclub in modern day Paris. Somehow, a luckless loser manages to travel back in time from the new club to the original in writer-director Herve Hadmar’s 6-episode time-travel fantasy Wonderland (a.k.a. Romance), which is now streaming on MHz Choice.

Jeremy has been underachieving since failing out of medical school. After his wife divorced him, he has been living with his sister and her kids. Frankly, getting a job at the rebooted Wonderland club is a step up for him. Beliani was skeptical, but he managed to talk himself into a job, through his knowledge of jazz and retro mixed drinks. On his first night, he is struck by a photo of a beautiful woman on the beach with her back turned to the camera. While cleaning up, he puts a vintage Odetta record on the turntable and finds himself transported back to the 1960 club.

The confused Jeremy wanders the beach, until he happens across a party, just in time to save a reveler from drowning. She is the younger sister of entitled Chris Desforges, who happens to be engaged to the mysterious Alice, the very woman in the photograph. The Desforges immediately welcomes him into their circle, but as Jeremy (assuming the identity of his old, cranky med school teacher) observes their group dynamics, he realizes he has been sent back in time to save the moody Alice from the ominous fate hanging over her. He also falls for her hard, which makes things increasingly awkward around her violently jealous fiancé.

Wonderland is a terrific time-travel romance that incorporates strong mystery-thriller elements. It takes a decidedly dark turn when it reveals Alice’s secret, but it makes perfect sense in light of France’s 20^th Century history. Admittedly, the ending does not make much sense (it probably should have concluded five or ten minutes sooner), but most of the time travel stuff is quite effective—especially the frequent reappearances of the fateful Odetta album. The selection of her haunting “Deep Blue Sea” is also tonally perfect.