Limetown: I Have Heard The Future
October 17, 2019 6:00 AM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

Facebook Watch (which is the name for the Facebook video service with original content) presents a (streaming) television adaptation of the popular podcast. American Public Radio correspondent Lia Haddock investigates the disappearance of an entire town's worth of people from the government run research facility of Limetown.
posted by DirtyOldTown (9 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
The reviews for this seem mostly positive.

I have been anticipating this show for some time.

But if there is a single thing I liked about it, I do not know what that is.

It feels less like an adaptation of the podcast than a series of promotional videos made for it with no particular sense of obligation to relay the story or vibe.

The loss of the laser beam focus and relentless narrative drive created by focusing the entire story through the public radio show lens is just brutal.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:05 AM on October 17, 2019


Every little bit of it just felt phony to me. Recording a phone call by holding the phone in the general vicinity of a microphone? A town of 326 with mostly three story buildings and everyone has a two car garage? To drive where?

It was less than 30 minutes in length and still felt interminable. TBH, I dozed off and didn't see the end. Maybe something outstanding happens and I missed it.

Maybe I was in the wrong mood and should give it another shot. It's hard for me to grok having hated it this much.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:14 AM on October 17, 2019


In the version in my brain, Lia Haddock is played by Sarah Baker, the show is shot in a Ken Loach style, with naturalistic and minimalist setups, and the town is a humble wanna be Rockwellian rust belt town with rows of plain white cottages layered with fifteen years of decay by the time Haddock sees it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:54 AM on October 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


Thanks for taking one for the team here DirtyOldTown... I recently discovered the podcast and really enjoyed it, so I was curious about the video adaptation even though I wasn't hearing the best things about it.

I'll move it from the 'ooh, have a look at this soon' list to the 'eh, have a look at this when you're on day two of bed rest and nothing else is handy' list.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:12 PM on October 22, 2019 [1 favorite]


I ... didn't hate it? But it hasn't brought much to expand the podcast. I agree with DOT that Limetown doesn't look right.

I loved the podcast, and enjoyed the precursor book (I listened to the audiobook). I'll stick this out.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:39 AM on October 28, 2019


Agree with the others that Limetown doesn't look right. Instead of looking like The Good Place (crossed with a 2010s Washington, DC exurb), I was expecting it to look a lot more like 1950s white-picket-fence suburbia (similar to the research towns that were hastily built to support the Manhattan Project).

Thinking about it more, the Limetown described in the podcast also doesn't really feel like 2004, and I wonder if the show should have revised that detail to put it into the more distant past.
posted by schmod at 9:51 AM on November 22, 2019


I really do not want to dislike the show this much. I am hanging around these comments hoping for someone to completely contradict me and convince me I am wrong and that it is good and not extremely awful.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:56 AM on November 22, 2019


It’s now on Peacock.

I remember being lukewarm about season 2 of the podcast, and the book. I’ll watch the premiere, at least.
posted by Pronoiac at 5:11 PM on January 2, 2021


I normally don't do this, but out of all the stuff I've watched over the past few years, this is the only one I regret sticking with.

If you liked the podcast but not this episode.... stop now. It gets worse, and watching it almost completely destroyed my fondness for the source material. This whole show was just an absolute dumpster fire.
posted by schmod at 11:36 AM on November 18, 2021


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