Untrue Stories – Season 1
Untrue Stories is a full-cast surreal metafictional science fiction comedy serial about classic sci-fi authors going on adventures through time and worlds. It begins with George Orwell about to finish his groundbreaking speculative novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, a dark prediction of a world of Rubik’s cubes, fondue sets and fluorescent clothing.
When his literary nemesis H. G. Wells shows up with a time-travel bicycle, an argument about the destiny of mankind (and the right way to make a nice cup of tea) ends with Wells taking a trip to 1984 to see whether Orwell was right. He finds that the book was such a hit, making everybody so terrified of Orwell’s vision of a vacuous, shoulder pad-obsessed, rampant capitalist society, that the world went to the other extreme and has become a totalitarian communist dictatorship in which free thought is outlawed, there’s a perpetual war between three superpowers, and nobody will ever have a nice cup of tea again.
After that, it gets a bit silly, with other classic SF authors becoming involved including Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Asimov and Ursula Le Guin.
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Check out Untrue Stories – Season 1 in its Entirety
Episode 1 – A Nice Cup of Tea
George Orwell has rented a Scottish cottage to complete his final novel. Unfortunately, he’s been double-booked with the very last person he’d choose a holiday with.
In this Untrue Stories episode, tea and tempers boil over as Orwell and his inadvertent roommate H. G. Wells argue over the fate that awaits humankind. Will society develop into Wells’s steam-powered dream, or Orwell’s dystopian nightmare? Wells’ latest engineering project may allow them to settle their bet…
Episode 2 – The Wheels of Chance
H. G. Wells takes a wrong turn on his time-travelling bicycle, and finds that he and Orwell have both lost their bets.
Continuing the adventures of George Orwell and H. G. Wells, Wells’ inaugural time-travel journey takes him a bit further into the future than he intended: instead of one week, he travels nearly forty years. What he finds matches neither his own predictions nor Orwell’s – but is surprising, horrifying, and completely untrue.
Episode 3 – Battle Ground
Wells and Julia have changed the future, but can they be sure they’ve changed it for the better? No.
H. G. Wells’ and Julia’s tinkering with the timeline has unexpected (and, of course, untrue) results. Julia, born in the future they’ve just changed, experiences a strange transformation as the timeline ripples… but what does it mean? And all the while, their enemies’ power grows ever stronger, leading to the arrival of a character who might finally be able to give them some answers — but if so, they’ll be in the next episode.
Episode 4 – How a Nation is Exploited
How a power-crazed junta of 20th-century dystopian authors overthrew Western democracy — and what went wrong.
In the fourth exciting instalment of the time-travelling adventures of George Orwell and H. G. Wells, 1984‘s Big Brother himself has appeared before our heroes to relate the story of his rise to power at the head of a team of dystopian visionaries — Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley and Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Mini Episode – Evil George Orwell
George Orwell meets the version of George Orwell that internet weirdos often seem to confuse him with.
Mini Episode – Exile to Hell
Big Brother makes an unofficial visit to the Inner Hebrides Joycamp to pay his personal respects to a special prisoner.
Episode 5 – Man Becomes a Different Animal
Wells arrives in a distant future where humanity as we know it is extinct. How will he get his bicycle repaired now?
Following H. G. Wells’ hurried departure from Orwell’s world of 1984, his malfunctioning time-bicycle veers into the far and bizarre future that he will one day chronicle in his own novella, The Time Machine. Facing off against super-evolved pale blue cannibals, he’s relieved to run into a couple of unexpected familiar faces.
Episode 6 – The Wonderful Visit
Orwell, Wells and their pals gather in 1948 for the astonishing season finale.
Wells arrives back on the Isle of Jura with an uninvited guest, where things come to a head as even more time travelling science fiction writers arrive to interfere.
What did you think of Untrue Stories – Season 1?
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