⭐8.2
Description: A teacher discovers a time portal that leads to October 21st, 1960 and goes on a quest to try and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which is complicated by the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald and the fact that he’s falling in love with the past itself.
Creator: Bridget Carpenter
Stars: James Franco, Sarah Gadon, George MacKay
Taglines: When you fight the past, the past fights back.
Trivia
- The scene where Jake follows the Russian to a JFK campaign speech utilized actual audio from the speech JFK gave that day, in that location. The speech and location was heavily photographed in 1960, and was recreated near perfectly.
- The opening credits changed slightly every week, reflecting Jake’s changes to the time line and/or foreshadowing events in the episode.
- The story that Jake tells Mimi is taken from the films The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Godfather: Part III (1990).
- In the first episode Jake (James Franco) makes a reference to Stephen King’s Misery (1990), “I’m his number one fan!”
- The car that Sadie Dunhill gets into during the first episode is the same red 1958 Plymouth Fury that the movie and book Christine (1983) were based on. Plymouth did not make a red Fury in 1958.
- Daniel Webber (Lee Harvey Oswald) and Lucy Fry (Marina Oswald) are actually dating in real life.
- Another one of the many references to other Stephen King books and movies: one of the stores visible on the Main Street in Lisbon, Maine, is Blue Ribbon Laundry–also the name of the business where Margaret White (mother of Carrie) worked in the novel Carrie.
- During the opening credits of some, but not all episodes, a diagram of a serpant eating its own tail is shown in yellow with a black background. This symbol is known as the ouroboros. The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. Foremost is the symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, or eating its own tail. This symbolizes the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death.
- In the Stephen King novel which serves as the basis for the TV show, the main character travels back to 1958. In the show the rabbit hole takes him to 1960.
- Jonathan Demme was originally going to write, direct and produce a film version of the novel. But he left the project after disputes with Stephen King.