When I was young I used to read quite a lot about UFOs and aliens. I really believed in most of the stories and I even sucessfully reuploaded a few alien-related videos on my Youtube channel, with one of the videos getting 550k views so far. And although I am convinced now that this is all bullshit, I still feel like this is quite a good topic for a movie... Or a TV series. So when I heard of Project Blue Book, I immediately delved deep into it. Was I satisfied?
The show was produced by a few people, including Robert Zemeckis, a well-known director with some experience in SF. The main and only known actor starring in it is Aidren Gillian, one of my favourites. While most of you know him as Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, I first saw him in The Wire, where he played a politican, Tommy Carcetti. It was definately one of his best roles ever and I saw a lot of them. In Project Blue Book he plays dr. Allen Hynek, who was a real scientist working of the US government in 50s. The show is of course only inspired by real history, as the viewers can quickly realise, that aliens in fact might be real and not really as benevolent, as one might have expected...
Unfortunately the show had a really low budget, which is quite obvious. There aren't that many extras and most of the scenes shot on the air are actually quite poorly rendered CGI. After all the show is set in 50s and it would be really expensive to work on real sets and objects. Unfortunately the script is quite lacking - both main characters have an interesting relation with well-written dynamics, but the show has a really fast pace with a lot of weird cuts. A lot of the scenes are hardly believable due to lack of extras. For example we see only two US Air Force generals - had there been a few more, with different opinions etc., there would be a lot more tension without a need to spend a lot more money.
But hey, I was engaged and I bingewatched everything in one day. I liked the show overall and will definately watch the second season too. I don't really recommend it to most viewers, but if you liked The X Files and conspiracy thrillers such as Three Days of the Condor, you should definately five Project Blue Book a try. While flawed, I still think this is an enjoyable show, with an interesting spin on the early 50s and Cold War paranoia.
I would love to hear more from you! What do you think about this short review and the show? Will you watch it or rather give it a pass? Please express your opinion in the comments!