Host John Newland tells us he is in April 1912.  He pulls a book off the shelf and mysteriously says “We will return to it later.”  Like me with that 1,000 page LBJ biography.

Grace Montgomery wakes up from a nightmare.  She screams for her mother despite not being six.  In fact, she is a beautiful woman.  Her mother does rush to her room.  She frantically says, “It was water, dark water.  I was drowning.  I couldn’t swim anymore, I was drowning.”  Her mother blames pre-wedding jitters.  “In four days, you’ll be on your honeymoon in Switzerland, and you can’t drown in Switzerland.”  You know, unless ya falls into one of those big vats of chocolate.

The next morning, her fiancee Eric Farley comes by the house to see “how the future Mrs. Farley looks in the morning.”  After his terror when her mother answers the door, they sit down for tea.  Eric surprises her by saying they are not going to Switzerland; they are going to America! ^[1]  He giddily asks her how she thinks they will get there, but in 1912, that’s not a big f***ing mystery.  It is by boat, specifically The Titanic.  Even more specifically, they are in cabin 111B right next door to John Jacob Astor. ^[2]  Thanks to Astor’s 29-years younger wife, April 14th won’t be the first night the Farlings have trouble sleeping.

She acts excited, but is worried because of her nightmare.  Her mother reads from the paper that The RMS Titanic is the world’s largest and most luxurious liner.  “By virtue of her five watertight compartments, she’s being hailed in marine engineering circles as the unsinkable ship.”

That night, Grace has another nightmare.  People in the water!  A huge ship going down!  She says she could even read the name Titanic on the lifeboats in her dream.  The next day, she and Eric discuss her dream.  He racistly says, “You don’t believe what you see in your sleep unless you’re a gypsy.”

Surprisingly, the next scene is on Titanic.  Other passengers have also had premonitions, bad feelings, heebies, and jeebies.  More surprisingly, the next next scene is in New York City, although not as surprising as if Grace and Eric were there.  Artist Harry Teller has hypnotically drawn a picture that his wife calls “awful, but his best work.”  To be fair, it is pretty awesome.

That night, Titanic hits the iceberg.  Even after being ordered to the lifeboats, Eric is cheerfully reminding Grace that the ship is unsinkable.  He puts her on lifeboat 4, but he goes down on the ship, and possibly one of the stewards.  Hey, why keep pretending?

Host John Newland returns, as promised, to the book.  It was published in 1898 and tells the story of The Titan, a ship whose dimensions and fate are the same as The Titanic.  It is a familiar story of hubris, arrogance, and the resulting loss of thousands of lives, so even more like that LBJ bio than I thought.

The second episode is as well-crafted as the first.  The production was enhanced by using footage from old Titanic movies.  Still, there is a certain sameness that I fear will creep into every episode.  Is this just going to be the premonition/reincarnation of the week?

Other Stuff:

• [1] They could have ended the episode right there; like the Twilight Zone that ended with the characters fleeing to Earth rather than from it.  It did not register with me that this was set in England.  I guess the elegance and manners seemed possible to me in this country 112 years ago.
• [2] The Astors were actually in rooms C62 and C64, which frankly ruined this episode for me.

So we begin a new series.  Because every genre show must be compared to The Twilight Zone, I’ll compare it to The Twilight Zone.  It is no Twilight Zone.

But it debuted a year before TZ, and I have only watched one episode, so it might turn out fine.  They use a host like most TV anthologies.  I appreciate that the host here, John Newland, is not just a carpetbagger like Truman Bradley on Science Fiction Theatre.  Bradley — Tru’, I call him — seems like a swell guy, but why is he there?

Serling is the king of the hosts because, in addition to being a scary dude, he created the TZ world and wrote a huge number of the episodes.  Sorry, 2 faceless guys on the 1980’s TZ run, you were awful.  Forrest Whitaker, I like you as an actor, but you were just collecting a check on the 2000’s TZ.  Hey, Jordan Peele, I appreciate your movies, but I don’t see any writing or directing credits on the series. ^[4] Plus, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay a nickel to watch TZ or Star Trek when God intended them to be free!  Fight the power!

Anyhoo, I respect John Newland for directing 94 of the 96 episodes of One Step Beyond.  I also see a single writer was responsible for 72 episodes. ^[3] I hope these guys know what they’re doing . . .

John Newland announces that he is in The Elite Bar and Grill — stop the tape!  Well, that didn’t take long.  The ornate writing on the door clearly says Ray’s Bar.  This appears to be a set — how could they not get that right?

Matt and Sally McCoy are celebrating their wedding at this elite cafe named Ray’s Bar.  I guess the reception was held there because Newland was diddling the cake earlier.  Adding to the class and sanctity of this blessed event, a couple of dudes have attended in their work-shirts with the name of a moving company on the back.  Sally is dancing with a bunch of the guys who are Matt’s friends, but everyone seems happy.

The happy couple bails out so they can reach their honeymoon hotel by 9:00.  We hear that Sally has a heavy, adorable Southern accent.  On the drive to the hotel, Matt says, “Those crazy guys down at Tommy’s.  You sure knocked them for a loop.”  Wait, so the joint is named Tommy’s now? ^[1]  Suddenly Sally sits up as erect as Matt and says, “Matt, if we turn left about a mile ahead, it is a prettier drive.”  As they approach the road, Sally says, “Turn right.”  Then when the reach the road, Matt turns left.  What the hell?

Matt pulls the car over, and Sally gets out.  She runs to a beautiful cliff overlooking the ocean. ^[2]  She is darting about as if confused and in a trance.  Matt asks her what is wrong.  She says,”Who are you?”  Even stranger, she has lost her accent quicker than Elizabeth Olsen in Avengers: Infinity War.  She runs back to the car and — LOL — takes it, stranding Matt.

He is able to flag down a cop.  As they are driving back to the station, the officer sees a light on at the ol’ Wharton place.  And hey, Matt recognizes his car out front.  As they go inside, the cop says the former owner jumped to her death from the cliff Sally just led them to.  Sally suddenly appears and tells the cop in a nice midwestern non-accent, “No, I didn’t kill myself!  I was murdered!  I was murdered!”

So they take her to the nut-house.  Matt chews out the doctor for keeping her drugged up.  Then the doctor plays tapes of Sally insisting that she is named Karen Wharton.  She again insists she was murdered.  She even knows Karen Wharton’s birthdate, mother’s name, how her father died, and all about that special night during finals at Bryn Mawr.  That’s all fine, but then she tells the doctor that she knows his wife drowned at a picnic in 1941 during freak dunk tank accident.  Not only that, she says that four years ago, the doctor asked her to marry him.  Hunh?

She says she was murdered by Dan Stapler who she used to be married to.  The doctor knows that Dan was never married.  Sally — oh sorry, she’s identifying as Karen today — says they kept the marriage secret because her mother hated Dan.   Her mother’s instincts were correct as Dan soon bashed Karen’s head in and threw her off the cliff.

Of course, all this is so Dan Stapler can panic and prematurely blow his wad, confessing before the local Perry Mason can even get him on the stand.  I’m sure the testimony of the crazy lady who did not know any of them, had never been to the city, and no longer remembered her her paranormal flashback would have held up in court.  Mission accomplished, Karen Wharton vanishes from inside Sally and she and Matt head for the hotel to fill that void.

This was actually a pretty good start.  The episode looked great, but the bar might have been lowered by low-res DVDs and You Tube public domain uploads of other series I endure.  It was refreshing just to see a crisp, clear B&W picture.  The music was a little overwrought at the end, and the story was a little thin, but consider this a Pilot.

My only real beef is the bit where Karen said the doctor asked her to marry him four years ago.  It is bizarre how that is shoehorned in, given no reaction, then dropped.  I can only figure that 1) a scene was deleted for time, and/or 2) that was supposed to explain why the doctor just happened to have an 8 x 10 glamor shot of Karen Wharton in his office that was not an X-Ray of her skull.

My only fear, largely based on nothing, is that the series will be the same story every week.  Until proven correct, I will be uncharacteristically optimistic.

Other Stuff:

• [1] You’re thinking Tommy’s is the name of the moving company where they all work.  Nope, that’s Nor-Cal Van & Storage.
• [2] Maybe not worth a footnote, but dayum Sally looks hot in that white dress on the cliff with that blinding smile.
• [3] Hmmmm, upon further examination, most of the episodes had other writers.  Lawrence Marcus was credited as Executive Writer on 50 of them.  His other credits include Dramatized By, Dramatised By, Dramatisation, and a very special Material Assembled By.
• [4] Correction, he does have one TZ Story By credit for Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.  However: 1) the episode is based on the original TZ’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, 2) that was based on the Richard Matheson short story, 3) he shares the Story By credit with 2 other guys, and 4) one of the other guys wrote the teleplay.  So I’m not sure how much his fingerprints are on the episode.