Season one of The Twilight Zone, while not perhaps containing the ultimate highs of later years (Nick of Time, Nothing in the Dark, et al) is solidly made anthology television, the only season to not contain a single below-par episode. In fact, of the 36 episodes, then I make the tally 15 average, 21 above. Not bad going for a season that aired nearly fifty years ago (2/10/1959 - 1/7/1960). It's dated in many ways, quite naturally. When a series has a moral of the week, as many American series do, then it fails to travel truly successfully over the Atlantic, as do episodes where Rod Serling begins by quoting Hamlet. Yet these opening narrations do have a kind of quaint charm, and Serling's hard-boiled dialogue and clipped delivery is distinctive. For this first season he didn't actually appear onscreen, save for little-seen (in reruns) trailers for the following week's episode. This is reversed in the season closer, A World of his Own, where Rod's wittily revealed to be a figment of a writer's imagination. It's also strange to see him smoking a fag (a cigarette for US readers), something many episodes delighted in... And When The Sky Was Opened even sees patients in hospital puffing away. The best episodes have to include I Shot An Arrow Into The Sky and People Are Alike All Over, which, when spliced together, pretty much make up Serling's co-written treatment for Planet of the Apes. The aforementioned When The Sky… is also excellent, containing no explanation of its weirdness, and many of the best ones are overlooked, such as the unsettling The Hitch-Hiker or Nightmare As A Child. In a famous 1959 interview previewing the series with Mike Wallace, Serling memorably stated that "we're dealing with a half hour show [...] which doesn't use scripts as vehicles of social criticism. These are strictly for entertainment." There's a suspicion that Rod was trying to wilfully deceive, lest the network got itchy feet, and certainly later seasons see greater social commentary, as did Serling's The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street in this debut season. But it's undeniable that season one is comparatively a "safe" product, a terrific set of scripts that nevertheless don't try and push too hard in terms of things to say, and instead settle for entertaining the viewer. One notable exception is the episode The Big Tall Wish, a delightful story with some memorable direction, made more prominent by starring a black cast. It's the sort of groundbreaking television that's almost meaningless today, but was a big step forward for 1960, and strangely something which the series never attempted again. Of the weaker episodes, then even the four comedy stories (or arguably five, if you count the sometimes daffy The After Hours) work. Rod perhaps shows he can't do sophisticated comedy with the season's weakest episode, “Robot plays baseball” yarn The Mighty Casey, yet it's still mediocre, and nowhere near as broad as the following season's dire Mr. Dingle, The Strong. While the series was Serling's brainchild and he contributed a staggering 28 scripts, he also had help from Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, who wrote four and three scripts respectively. Sole exception to this trio was Robert Presnell Jr. with his only script for the series, the amusing The Chaser. Classic Episode: The Big Tall Wish Original Air Date: 8/4/1960 Writer: Rod Serling Director: Ron Winston Synopsis: Readers of the site from its launch may recall that I'd originally selected People Are Alike All Over as the pick of season one. When I did so, I'd criminally underrated this episode, possibly the best the Zone ever ran. Although the make-up department won't win any awards for The Big Tall Wish, it's one of Serling's most literate scripts as a boxer's shattered dreams act as a metaphor for civil rights. So unusual was it at the time to see a piece of television with a black starring cast, the series was given a special award. Heart rending and raw, the direction to this one is exceptional, and the use of a stage backdrop to recreate a rooftop in the final act elevates it yet further, the theatrical artifice putting it in the field of works like A Raisin In The Sun (of which star Ivan Dixon was a part) rather than a supposedly unambitious television production. Superb. Rating: * * * * * Not-So-Classic Episode: None Synopsis: While praising The Twilight Zone I must also acknowledge that it wasn't always perfect television. But this isn't applicable here… later seasons may have been more adventurous, but none were so consistently good as this.