Hollywood Off-Ramp

By James Poniewozik

Is there anything in Hollywood more frightening than the possibility of more Flintstones sequels? E! hopes so, having chosen a sort of Tinseltown Twilight Zone for its first fictional series. Coming from the home of snide, shoestring productions like Talk Soup, this noirish anthology is surprisingly slick in look and earnest in tone. It sometimes earns a good satiric laugh, but mostly it's dead serious, more so than the corny dialogue ("A lot of dirty little things get whispered in the night") and predictable plots deserve. As for making show biz scary, isn't that why we have The E! True Hollywood Story?

--By James Poniewozik