The animation in all eight offerings in season two is well above average, ranging from a marvelously stylistic 2-D “Ice” to sly caricatures in “Automated Customer Service” to a gritty hyperrealism in “Pop Squad” or “Life Hutch”.
The stories themselves had plotlines familiar to SF fans—robot uprisings, grim cops in dystopian cultures, immortality in a mortal universe, and stranded astronauts.
Two had more of a horrorstory theme: All Through the House, where a slimy monster with lots of teeth terrorizes two young children on Christmas Eve, and “The Tall Grass” by Simon Otto in which a train stops for a minor repair, a passenger gets off for a smoke break and sees odd lights in the surrounding corn field. The credits on the latter listed one “Stephen King” amongst the animators, and while it may just have been coincidence (the name isn’t unique, after all) the story was enough like something King might have written that the name might have been a tip of the hat. “Ice” is a story of a group of youths daring to face a hyperweaponized version of a whale. The author was Rich Larson, but the tone was very much Roger Zelazny.
They’re all good enough to devote the time to watch, but the stand out is “The Drowned Giant” based on the JG Ballard story. It’s the one that really has heart, when a mysterious 200 foot tall man washes up on a beach in the south of England, and the responses of the locals to the entity that lies dead, slowly decaying. Some wish to study, some wish to profit, and some simply want to express futile outrage by petty vandalism. It’s the one amongst the eight that will leave you pondering the human condition.
While it lacks the scope and ambition of the first season, it is a fun way to blow a couple of hours, and allows you to enjoy the technological marvel that animation has become.