Here’s the Los Angeles Times’ review of the first three episodes of “Strange Angel.” I know we’ve posted ALOT about this coz… well, is the most mainstream exposure we’ve gotten since, er… The Beatles put the Prophet of the Lovely Star on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s! In this case — well, as this story takes place in the Los Angeles area it makes sense to see how a local, um, makes sense of it it! I think this is the first reviewer I’ve read that that noticed that all the characters except Jack are not historical figures per se. Here’s an excerpt:
“While Parsons keeps his name, every other fact-based character gets a new identity, allowing creator-writer Mark Heyman to play freely with their facts. Wife Helen becomes wife Susan (an excellent Bella Heathcote); eventual rocket team member Apollo Milton Olin Smith becomes Samson Hunt (Zack Pearlman) and Tsien Hsue-shen is called Gui Chang (Keye Chen). Theodore von Kármán, who ran Caltech’s aeronautical lab, is recast as the doubting Prof. Filip Mesulam (Rade Serbedzija).
“When we meet him, in late-1930s Los Angeles, Parsons (Jack Reynor) is a fresh-faced, soft-featured fellow whose well-trimmed mustache seems a hedge against looking like a child. He works days in a gunpowder factory and at night heads off into the scrub to shoot off rockets just outside Pasadena city limits with his pal Richard Onsted (Peter Mark Kendall), a character that combines real-life mathematician Frank Malina and Parson’s childhood friend and fellow rocketry enthusiast Edward Foreman.
“The mixed success, which is to say the predominant failure, of their experiments does not deter Parsons from thinking big; a devotee of science fiction and pulp fantasy, in the late 1930s he already has his eye on sending a man into space. In his off hours he dreams of spiritual transcendence.”
Read the whole review:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-strange-angel-review-20180611-story.html.
