Science-fiction for all audiences by the hand of six self-contained stories starring adolescents who explore the dangers of the abuse of technology, a very topical topic
For the whole family, this is how the nice ‘Switches’ is presented and must be understood, a new light bet on Apple TV+ that amounts to a decaffeinated ‘Black Mirror’, starring teenagers. Easy to digest, with a first season consisting of six installments of just over twenty minutes each, its aesthetic is reminiscent of Club Disney. His intentions are close to ‘Weird City’, that series by Jordan Peele, unapologetically promoted by YouTube Premium, which was adapted, like Charlie Brooker’s popular creation, to the anthology format, with stand-alone episodes, along the lines of ‘The Twilight Zone’ aka ‘At the limits of reality’ or ‘The Outer Limits’. The YouTube Original was not launched on the right platform -let’s remember that YouTube tried to overshadow Netflix and company, but they ended up throwing in the towel when the paid content did not work-. However, its premise was interesting, approaching current affairs under the prism of a science fiction to walk around the house. Here, issues of contemporary interest are also included in small doses, emphasizing the relationship that human beings experience with the rise of new technologies. With humor and a friendly tone, there is no shortage of morals, the final message, thinking of children and young people, who seem to always have to be taught some kind of lesson -a subject worthy of analysis- when telling a story, be it in whatever medium, even if it is light-hearted.
The final moral message, available in each chapter, is an inherent feature of this type of anthology format, like compilations of short horror stories, there’s ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’. ‘Interruptors’ is a family science-fiction series, there is no room for horror, and it takes place in the same town, where several characters intersect, especially in the corridors and classrooms of the same academic institution where the protagonists move like fish in the water with technological advances. We understand that we are in a probable future, just around the corner, where the world has not changed too much outwardly, but there are curious inventions that are supposedly intended to make our lives easier.
Through small visual details we are aware, as the public, that what happens in the series is tomorrow, but the problems that are exposed do not differ excessively from today. The visionary intention is obvious, without excesses, to the point that the funniest chapter, the fourth, is limited to shooting a formula that has given rise to numerous films and continues to work today: the idea of the classic body swap that puts a teenager in the physique of an adult, and vice versa, this time a student and the director of the school. A scheme that we have already seen in ‘Put yourself in my place (Freaky Friday)’ and other titles in the same vein as ‘Viceversa’, ‘Like a splinter, like a stick’ or the recent horror comedy ‘This body feels like death ‘.
‘Switches’, created by Melody Fox, whose motto is “one city, infinite possibilities”, is seen with pleasure, you don’t have to think too much about its lack of originality considering its objective. It begins with a story with nanobots that make a boy who wants to improve his mark as an athlete grow, with an open ending, to continue with another story of improvement, that of a boy who wants to conquer the world as a dancer. The boy is replaced by an android in student classes while he rehearses the different dance steps like crazy in front of a mirror that scores his effort. A girl tries to reunite her divorced parents using a machine that allows group memories to be revived from a photograph and a strange experiment slows down space-time at school, giving rise to curious situations. The cast is made up of a practically rookie cast: Callan Farris, Nathaniel Bueschar, Veda Cienfuegos, Cole Keriazakos, Maz Jobrani, Cale Ferrin, Quincy Kirkwood and Arielle Halilli. Matthew Hastings (‘Shadowhunters’) directs several episodes.
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