The Twilight Zone, on CBS All Access
IMDb; Monkeypaw Productions; TV Tango; TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
other streaming sites: Amazon; Fandango; YouTube

This is the fourth incarnation of The Twilight Zone, and the first to be released on a streaming service rather than TV. It was hosted by Jordan Peele, who was also one of the show's developers and executive producers. It ran for two seasons of ten episodes each, in 2019-20, but I didn't get to see it until 2025 (starting on New Year's Eve) to 2026, on DVD. I plan to say a bit about each episode as I watch them, but I'll try to give the series as a whole a single rating, instead of rating each episode, as I do for some anthology series.

Season One

The Comedian
A struggling stand-up comedian named Samir (Kumail Nanjiani) meets a famous comedian named J.C. Wheeler (Tracy Morgan), who hadn't been seen in a long time. He gives Samir advice about putting himself into his comedy. After that, Samir does a bit about his dog, and the audience loves it. But when he gets home, he learns that he'd never had a dog. Next time he's on stage, he talks about his girlfriend's nephew, Deven, and again the audience loves it. And to his horror, he discovers that Deven never existed. But soon, he starts incorporating bits about people he thinks are bad, into his act, and they disappear, as do any effects they'd had on the world. (It kind of reminded me of Death Note, but this was even more intense than just killing people, albeit without the fear of being caught, since no one else remembered anyone who disappeared.) Eventually, the effects of his act come between him and his girlfriend, Rena, who breaks up with him. He regrets what he's done, and doesn't want to continue doing stand-up, but a rival comedian named Didi convinces him to go on, when a scout for a TV show comes to the comedy club to pick one of them to add to the cast. Things come to a head when Samir has to decide who to talk about in his act. I won't say how that turns out, but I will say it was something I'd been hoping would happen for quite awhile, by that point. Anyway, I think the episode was pretty good. Not truly great, but definitely good. It's an interesting morality play, and a solid start to the series.