The War of the Worlds is the latest adaptation of HG Well's book. This new adaptation stars Eleanor Tomlinson, Rafe Spall, Robert Carlyle and Rupert Graves. A three-part series which is set in Woking in 1905, full of special effects. This centres on four characters; the couple George and Amy, their friend and outcast Ogilvy, and finally Frederick, who is secretary to the minister for war whilst also having a strained relationship with his brother George. All of these characters and the rest of the population of Surrey are soon fighting for their lives when a mysterious capsule that appears to be transport for an alien comes to Earth. When this novel was adapted and premiered on the radio in 1938 in New York. This caused wide-spread panic across the US as the listeners believed this to be a real invasion of the Earth by aliens from Mars.
There is always concern when there is going to be a new adaptation of something, especially a book. War of the Worlds by HG Wells is beloved book by many and when you do an adaptation, fans of the book know all the details and don't want anything to be missed out or changed. However, with that being said, this is the best time to produce a drama about the end of the world. Many parallels can be made from war to the climate crisis. This is a story of an alien invasion and the mass destruction of humanity.
Peter Harness is the writer/executive producer of this three-part series and he has shifted the action of this story from the Victorian era to the Edwardian era. Along with this the unnamed narrator now has a name, George (played by Rafe Spall), but the real narrator in this series is George's partner, Amy (Eleanor Tomlinson). Even with these changes, this adaptation is still respectful to the original source.
In this first episode, we are concerned with the relationship of George and Amy and setting up the characters we are going to be following. George is living in sin with Amy but they are very much in love however, George is still married to his cousin so he is living in exile with Amy in Woking. Amy befriends Ogilvy (Robert Carlyle) and they connect on how they are both pariahs in this society but we never discover why Ogilvy is a pariah due to the alien invasion. Later during this episode, we see a wall of photographs and notes left behind by people who are desperately searching for their loved ones; this is a very intense moment of the whole episode and is a moment the audience may relate to if they have lost someone they care about.
This episode is a good introduction to this story however the first 30-40 minutes are slow as we are building up to what is to come. What is noticeable is that within this episode we keep jumping to what we learn to be flash-forwards. These flash-forwards show dusty red hellscapes so we aren’t sure where we are, to begin with you may think that these moments are on Mars but it is only in the final moments we discover where and when these flash-forwards are set. The final flash-forward and moment of the episode is the most heart-breaking and intriguing moment of the entire episode and we, as an audience, want to know what is going to happen in the next episode.
Overall, this first episode is good but a bit slow at the start, however the special effects are amazing and completely believable. Performances are really good throughout, however George screaming after Amy does get annoying after a while. Comparing the performances in The War of the Worlds with His Dark Materials, which is the programme on before, His Dark Materials has much better performances so when you then watch The War of the Worlds, the performances don’t seem to have as much energy or impact. Hopefully, in the next two episodes the pace and the character performances pick up.
