Starting on Monday, it’s a new time and space for mind-bending 1960s TV show “The Twilight Zone.”
Sixty years after its television debut, the classic anthology series will be reborn on the CBS All Access subscription streaming service. Jordan Peele, the comedian and filmmaker behind horror hits “Get Out” and “Us,” steps into the narrator role once filled by Rod Serling, the show’s creator.
The foreboding theme music is back, as is the mix of science fiction, suspense and thought-provoking social commentary that hooked generations of fans to the show, which ran from 1959 to 1964 and is still widely aired in reruns.
Peele, who is also an executive producer of the show, said he was initially reluctant to take on a show considered by many critics to be among the best in TV history. He said he set aside his reservations once he discovered an “underlying positivity” put forth by Serling, who died in 1975.
“One of the things that opened this up for me is realizing he’s a humorist,” Peele said recently at The Paley Center for Media’s PaleyFest in Los Angeles. “We think of him as a horror, science-fiction master, but he has a perfect pitch tone of comedy.”
The revival promises to tackle some of humankind’s deepest and most universal issues, which was a hallmark of the original series.
