DECEMBER 30, 2022, 11:53 AM ET

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE' PRODUCER ON SHORT-LIVED REVIVAL 20 YEARS LATER: 'THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WANTED'
Like Rocky Valentine in "A Nice Place to Visit," producer Ira Behr was cast into his own personal Hell.

By Josh Weiss

During the production of UPN's short-lived 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone, Ira Behr found himself in a position similar to that of Rocky Valentine at the end of "A Nice Place to Visit." That is to say the writer and executive producer went from heavenly excitement to his own personal Hell.

Not too long before this, the enticing opportunity to revive The Twilight Zone — the iconic anthology series created by Rod Serling — came to Behr after the cancelation of ABC's Bob Patterson.

"We were doing sitcom hours, so I would get home at 6 o'clock in the morning and have to be back at the office at 11. It was tough, which turned out to be a good thing, because it prepared me for The Twilight Zone, which had many challenges of its own," he tells SYFY WIRE over Zoom, looking back at the short-lived revival 20 years after its debut. "When they offered it to me, I just thought, ‘It's The Twilight Zone!’ I like the Twilight Zone!' I'm always looking for something new to do, so an anthology sounded good. And it went downhill from there."

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Originally slated to air on CBS, home of the original anthology and its 1985 revival, this 21st-century iteration was ultimately moved over to UPN (a forerunner to The CW) in an effort to appeal to a younger demographic of viewers.

"All they wanted us to do was cast rappers and other people whose acting experience was… let’s just say limited," Behr recalls. "Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not work. And they got into this crazy-ass kick on making the show seem relevant. But since they [referring to the executives] were neither young nor relevant, it was like a talking a**hole." ...

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/twilight-zone-2002-upn-revival-producer-ira-behr-interview

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-twilight-zone-remembering-2002-upn-tv-revival

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/twilight-zone-syfy-marathon-new-years-eve-holds-up

The second episode of the second season of Peele’s Twilight Zone revival, “Downtime,” featured sci-fi A-lister Morena Baccarin (Firefly, Deadpool) as Michelle Weaver, a young woman who works in hotel hospitality. What starts as a relatively normal day turns into a sci-fi mystery that upends her entire existence and changes her life in the span of just a tight half-hour.

RELATED: Stream Episodes of Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone on SYFY

After a strange sensation, Michelle steps outside of the hotel to find essentially the entire world in a frozen trance, staring up at a massive red orb hovering in the sky. The weirder part? No one else seems particularly perturbed by it, with passersby casually asking her if she knows how long “downtime” will last.

Cue the fear and confusion.

Though The Twilight Zone has always dabbled in morality plays, cruel twists of fate and cleverly taught lessons, this episode evoked some of the open-ended big idea swings that Serling’s original 1959-1965 series positively reveled in. This episode isn’t out to make a heavy-handed point, so to speak, but is instead simply telling an ambitious science fiction story by dropping us all into a snapshot of a moment via the anthology format. The fact that Peele, who wrote the episode, and director JD Dillard were able to pull it all off in just 30 minutes is even more impressive.

Twilight Zone’s “Downtime” Explained



Michelle runs to her husband for help, but he suddenly “breaks character,” changing his voice and asking about the maintenance, before himself falling into a trance at the sight of the orb. As Michelle terrifyingly learns after a few run-ins with random strangers calling themselves “tech support,” her entire life is actually a giant simulation, essentially a second-life style video game, where people can log in and live out the lives of different avatars. A man named Phineas had been controlling Michelle, but he suffered a massive heart attack and is on life support, leaving Michelle’s consciousness in some untested limbo state with her user unconscious and failing. ...

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/jordan-peele-created-one-of-the-best-classic-twilight-zone-episodes-with-downtime