11.22.63

What would you do if you could travel back in time? Would you rush straight to 1992 to make sure that that class photo of you with that incendiary hairspray crest and NafNaf sweater with shoulder pads would never be taken? Would you agree in one of the seats at the Coliseum at Richfield to see Jordan send the Cavs on vacation early in the '89 playoffs with The Shot? Is that what you would do or are you less selfish and would you tweak history left and right for less misery in the history books? Lying to little Adolf that the ice on the big lake next to his house is thick enough to skate all the way to the middle? Bush whispering that Saddam would rather spend his money on golden 22s for his Rolls Royce Phantom than on weapons of mass destruction? Would you sabotage that episode of the sound mix show with Marco Borsato and his flaxy mustache, so that 25 years later we wouldn't be saddled with all those terrible albums? Is that what you would do, yes? Well, then you could have played James Franco in 11/22/63, the new one from Hulu, too. James is Jake and Jake has a little soul under his arm. Jake's wife doesn't feel like it anymore and after the divorce Jake is mainly devouring his misery in the dinner of his friend Al. If you're close friends, you shouldn't really keep secrets from each other, but Al has been secretly traveling to 1960 for a while through his provisions cupboard to try to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Yeah listen, I didn't come up with this either. Although he will probably have a lot of skills, but a little breeding with the course of history is not one of them. Now that Jake is at home just twiddling his thumbs, he can take over from Al. He zaps himself to Texas in the early 1960s and embarks on a massive venture to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting. Extremely attractive as Jake is, of course he immediately has the delicious mokkels hanging on his pants and with every friendship it becomes more difficult to return to his own time. Show Me A Hero. The Man In The High Castle. Hap And Leonard. Olive Kitteridge. In addition to films, books are increasingly used as a source of inspiration for new series. If one person wrote enough bizarre stories to tinker into series for days to come, it's Stephen King. While his book Under The Dome was mercilessly assaulted by CBS a few years ago, this time Hulu makes an attempt with the science fiction thriller 11/22/63 and that is not bad at all. Don't let the sci-fi genre put you off. I personally am not much of a fan of that either, but 11/22/63 really only asks one thing from your imagination: go along with the whole idea of time travel. There are no flying saucers, no E.Ts and everything just takes place on our planet. When series are set in the past, the right styling is often a challenge, but in this case Hulu has adopted it with both hands. Everything looks very neat. It is also nice to see that fact and fiction can go hand in hand so well. James Franco can act and I dare you not to fall head over heels in love with Sarah Gadon. The whole thing could have been an episode or two shorter, because in the middle it starts to drag on a bit, but at the bottom of the line a very thick enough. Hulu does not have a huge track record yet when it comes to 'own' series, but if this is going to be the average level then they may well spit out news at a faster pace.

The very best series I've seen in years. Good film adaptation of the book, top actors and everything is right. I really enjoyed all 8 episodes. Tribute to King and everyone who worked on this fantastic series. So a 10 !!