Hey, have you guys seen this yet?
It’s filmed right in our backyard! Or our front yard.. or something..
It just showed up on HULU, so Dorian and I watched the pilot episode last night along with episode two.
It’s fun to see sights we’re so familiar with, but we haven’t seen the cute blonde chick who plays a San Francisco police detective, or Hurley from “Lost.”
I guess they’re out there somewhere though, because they traipse all over San Francisco in the series while looking for prisoners who escaped Alcatraz in 1963 and are running amok committing crimes.
The premise of the show is that the prisoners all disappeared abruptly one cold night back then, and are now reappearing in our time looking like they haven’t aged a day.
Turns out the prisoners themselves don’t know what happened either.
I like this one scene where Hurley/Doc gives the cute blonde detective chick a look that basically says, “Hey, I was on ‘LOST’ and I can’t believe THIS SHIT!”
No really, he did..
So, the show is definitely a mystery/sci-fi period thing that meshes a little bit of LOST with PAN-AM and DOCTOR WHO. It’s fun and more importantly, it takes place right outside our front door. As I type, the real Alcatraz is approximately three miles to my port side.. *points*.. but I don’t think the prisoners all just vanished one night and are now running around our neighborhood.
At least I hope not.
The word around here is that Alcatraz the prison closed up shop in 1963 and just reassigned the prisoners to other penal institutions. In the TV show that’s the cover story and also in the show, like in reality, Alcatraz is a tourist attraction today that’s run by the National Park Service.
But we enjoyed watching the show not only for the good story, but the fact that the characters kept going into buildings we go into and walking by the same panhandlers who we walk by, and jumping out of the way of the same maniacal cab drivers that we do!
If you haven’t seen it I’ve embedded the pilot episode from Hulu below, because I know that your idea of a good time is to come to my blog for the express purpose of watching TV shows. You’re welcome.
ALCATRAZ.. the pilot!
NOTE – If you plan to visit us here in San Francisco someday and have never been here before, this series is a good way for you to familiarize yourself with local sights and extremely implausible science fiction all in one shot.
ADDITIONAL NOTE, AND A SAD ONE AT THAT – From IMDB.. “Even though the show is set in San Francisco, and some of the pilot was filmed in the city and on Alcatraz itself, the producers of the show opted to film the rest in Vancouver, mainly because of the much more attractive production rebates than California and the city of San Francisco could offer, much to the chagrin of the San Francisco film industry. “
So like, never mind. Dammit. Friggen’ CANADIANS.
NOTE TO SELF – Always check IMDB first, before spending an hour on a post about some stupid TV show.
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