Chester's Mill is a typical New England town
until one day a strange invisible and impenetrable dome descends over it. There is no obvious explanation as to what happened or why; at least not initially. Cut off from the outside world the people must figure out how to survive. The only member of the town's council; used car salesman 'Big Jim' Rennie assumes control through bullying and intimidation. Other key characters include his son, Junior, who locks his 'girlfriend' in a bomb shelter before the dome even appears, Dale 'Barbie' Barbara an Iraq veteran who is in town to kill somebody, newspaper woman Julia Shumway and police deputy Linda Esquivel to name just a few. As the series progresses so of the town's teenagers discover a 'mini-dome' that responds to their touch; contact with the outside is established and it becomes apparent that a sinister corporation appears to know more about the dome than they should and ultimately we learn of alien involvement.
When I first saw this series advertised everything looked positive; an interesting idea and the involvement of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg suggested it might be worth watching. The series opened well, quickly setting up the story and introducing a fairly large cast of characters. As the story progresses it gets more and more melodramatic as we learn that this apparently typical town seems to contain a greater than average number of atypical people. Early on we get more and more problems of the week as the population; while this is going on there is also the mystery of the mini-dome and its connection to the larger dome; this latter story is more interesting. As the story goes on it starts to feel like the writers are just trying to find new ways of extending the story and when major characters are written out it ceases to be dramatic and starts to feel like the actors may have found something better to do. Strangely, despite all that, I was rather disappointed to watch the last episode of season three, which is clearly not meant to be the series finale, and learn that the series had been cancelled it is a shame that we couldn't even get a wrap-up miniseries like 'Farscape' got. Overall I'd say it was okay but squandered some good ideas and given that it doesn't have a proper ending I can't really recommend starting watching this now.
When I first saw this series advertised everything looked positive; an interesting idea and the involvement of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg suggested it might be worth watching. The series opened well, quickly setting up the story and introducing a fairly large cast of characters. As the story progresses it gets more and more melodramatic as we learn that this apparently typical town seems to contain a greater than average number of atypical people. Early on we get more and more problems of the week as the population; while this is going on there is also the mystery of the mini-dome and its connection to the larger dome; this latter story is more interesting. As the story goes on it starts to feel like the writers are just trying to find new ways of extending the story and when major characters are written out it ceases to be dramatic and starts to feel like the actors may have found something better to do. Strangely, despite all that, I was rather disappointed to watch the last episode of season three, which is clearly not meant to be the series finale, and learn that the series had been cancelled it is a shame that we couldn't even get a wrap-up miniseries like 'Farscape' got. Overall I'd say it was okay but squandered some good ideas and given that it doesn't have a proper ending I can't really recommend starting watching this now.