“Hello Tomorrow” Gets a Double-thumbs-up-Daddy-O From Me

For people, who regularly, over the weekend, sit down with a remote in hand, staring blankly at a TV screen, and question, “what should I watch?” I may have the answer!

In Apple TV’s new series called “Hello Tomorrow,” starring, among many spectacular others, Billy Crudup, the audience is transported simultaneously to the past and future. A quick glimpse of this strange yet familiar world shows middle America, 1950s Suburbia-except with race equality — and that’s not even the twist!

From the beginning, we follow a crew of Traveling salesmen (and saleswoman) going from town to town, suburb to suburb, art deco front door to art deco front door, selling a better future and, at zero down, around $120 a month, condos on the moon. It’s a beautiful idea, I mean, literally!

Picture it — a resplendent morning in a busy neighborhood, a woman in a full skirt and heels kisses her husband (donning a suit, tie, and briefcase) goodbye as his jetpack propels him to work.

A shiny Studebaker, outfitted like a hoverboard, zooms by a floating robot (a not-so-distant cousin to the Roomba vacuum) walking a dog past another robot spraying pesticides over a well-groomed yard.

Happy children play as an autonomous truck delivers a package to a woman… only to accidentally, unknowingly, crush her — it’s a glitch, robotics with hiccups — proving that in this world, life may be easier, but perhaps, not better, and ripe for anyone wanting to take advantage.

We see this in action with a middle-aged man sitting inside a corner café as a robot (Think The Jetson’s public-trash-container-styled bot, only in candy-coated technicolor ) hands him a pint of beer.

Enter Jack (Crudup), a sympathetic, suit and tie-wearing silver-tongued stranger who quickly and uncomfortably pegs the other man’s whole, dreary life within one acutely accurate sales pitch. The offer? A family-designed timeshare among the stars (the twinkling-in-the-sky kind and famous movie star ones) located on the lunar surface! Too good to be true? Absolutely!

Life in this universe is Leave it to Beaver with mysterious undercurrents of The Stepford Wives. It’s perception vs. reality and dream vs. nightmare that’s got me hooked! And it’s not outside the realm of possibility that you will be, too!