Retrospective Review- Eerie, Indiana

I, like many of you I suspect, had a middling childhood; not great but not ungodly awful- to the untrained eye I wasted my free time in front of the goggle-box becoming a supposed anti social misfit, however TV provided a moral compass when mom and dad were working which still influences me today.

'Batman the Animated Series' was one of the most prominent programmes still in my memory but the one which I have the greatest fondness for was and still is 'Eerie, Indiana'. Let's get one this out of the way straight off the bat; this edition only carries the episodes in the original '1990s sepia tone', no special features or commentaries here; but before you throw a bitch-fit over this remember eerie Indiana was filmed in 1991-1992 and the most prominent platform was VHS, so no-one thought to add these features as it wasn't feasible without cramming 2 or more tapes into a box set there-in driving the price even further up.

The premise of the show was simple- we follow a young man by the name of Marshall Teller who has just moved from New Jersey to a new town where strange happenings go unnoticed by nearly all the residents except Marshalls' companion Simon. Each episode is a self contained story with no real series narrative or overarching, dastardly scheme spanning the series; these guys knew they were creating niche entertainment so didn't bother adding superfluous plot devices.

What marks 'Eerie, Indiana' as a stand out series compared to its contemporaries 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' or 'Goosebumps' was its ability to simultaneously entertain and deal with issues that affect teenagers; materialism, pressure to conform and the importance of questioning untamed authority but to name a few.

Stand out episodes are Zombies in P.J.s, Heart on a Chain and Reality Takes a Holiday; that’s not to say the rest of the series is a complete write off but for the uniniated it’s a chance to see the series at its best. Attempts to gain traction again after the original run resulted in 'Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension' and while competent enough writing was present it couldn't quite capture the originals' magic.

It's difficult to give this a rating without completely looking over the lack of features but if i had to I'd give this a rating it'd be a 'buy it and play it to your mollycoddled children/brother/sister/nephew/niece to remind them of their mortailty and snap them out fo their Disney induced trance '