Amazing Stories: Season 1 (2020)

Optimism isn’t a bad thing to have on TV shows, but when that’s the only thing you’ve got going for you, living up to “amazing” seems like a reach.

Steven Spielberg’s revival of his Eighties anthology series has been keenly awaited by viewers of a certain vintage. They are doomed to be disappointed.

Feeling underbaked even with all the resources of Apple and of Spielberg, “Amazing Stories’s” first hour doesn’t make a case for viewers to stay tuned.

Where’s the Spielbergian sense of mischief and wonder that we were promised?

If anything, the new iteration of the series might carry on that tradition and spirit a little too effectively. Judging by “The Cellar”, the show retains the look and feel of the original to such a degree that it feels oddly out of time...

It may be a measure of Apple TV+’s confidence in itself that it is prepared to look at a property and say: “You know what? If it ain’t broke, let’s not try to fix it.” And Spielberg’s never broken.

The color, settings and lavish social detail are mainly what distinguishes this enterprise—an adventure well worth an hour’s viewing, though its resolution is a bit cryptic, as sagas that belong to a category called “Amazing Stories” are wont to be.