Well, what a waste of time this turned out to be. THE NIGHTMARE WORLDS OF H. G. WELLS is a four-part TV miniseries that adapts four of the author's short stories into mini-movies. The series also features Ray Winstone as the titular author in perhaps the worst case of miscasting since Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH.
The reason behind this show's existence seems to be the success of PENNY DREADFUL, at which point the Sky producers went back and mined some other classic literature for inspiration. They've even cast Harry Treadaway's lookalike brother, Luke, in the first episode. The problem is that these productions are so low budget that they look like amateur films; there are no real sets here, just black backgrounds, and I've seen more convincing stuff on Youtube.
The first story is THE LATE MR ELVESHAM, a predictable body swap effort with an equally predictable conclusion. It's a waste of time and features Michael Gambon at his worst. The second story, THE DEVOTEE OF ART, is about a painting that comes to life and is even worse; I don't know why they bothered trying to do effects on this kind of budget. THE MOTH is the third tale and is the most potentially terrifying, but the poor FX, gross out scenes and some dodgy zooming camera-work ruin it.
The last story, THE PURPLE PILEUS, is about magic mushrooms and features black actor Shaun Parkes in the lead role, playing a character who is described in the story as a man with a 'pale face'. This episode manages to go outside of the set for a brief scene in a forest, but the staging continues to be ludicrous. This series is, as a whole, unwatchable and seems to have been made on a budget equal to the price of a pint of milk at my local shop.
