A new favourite among my favourite TV shows, it's a simple premise that doesn't always make sense logically but doesn't take itself seriously enough to try. Samuel Beckett (Scott Bakula, just a square-jawed every man hero) assembles a team of scientists including his best friend Al Calivicci (Dean Stockwell, brilliant) to undertake a time travel experiment in the desert to see if one can travel through time within the span of one's lifetime. In the pilot episode Sam ends up in the 1950s as a test pilot for an experimental jet plane trying to break mach 3. He must convince his wife, best friend and air force friends and superiors that he is test pilot Tom Stratton. In one hilarious instance he is given control of a B-29 bomber and doesn't know how to fly, so just sits while it tilts to one side, all while some hijinks music plays as the plane plummets to the Earth. Amazingly the brush this near death experience off as a joke. He meets his "neurological hologram" sidekick Al, a womanizing, cigar-smoking man. Dean Stockwell in the only role I've seen him in other than Blue Velvet, is hilarious and his reactions are priceless, as are those of Bakula sometimes, despite often being bland.
The first season is great, although some episodes are better than others. The show is at times funny and goofy, making fun of the 50s, and at other times more serious, when it tries to deal with issues of race or prejudice, like the great episode The Color of Truth, although it's always lighthearted fun. I'm a quarter of the way into season 2 at the moment, and it's getting better and better.
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