A Television Broadcast From Outer Space

An intergalactic broadcast from what scientists call ‘an alternate Earth’ has been received, and we are invited to sit down and watch along with the nation as the last day on this other world plays out before us.

When Orson Welles put on his radio play of H.G. Welles’, The War of the Worlds in 1938, the world was woefully unready for the panic that the broadcast would cause. Listeners could scarce tell the difference between what was fact and what was fiction from the information they were hearing coming from the only instant source of world news available at the time. People really thought the world was being invaded by aliens.

Here, in A Television Broadcast From Outer Space, we have Awesome Welles (Whitney) to introduce us to our (not so) alien TV channels which have been sent to us from a galaxy far, far away (no, not that one). Coming to us from what appears to be a Public Broadcasting basement and introducing the reel as though he were an announcer for TCM, or Jonathan Frakes in Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, Welles nonetheless lends his gravitas to the idea that something world shattering is upon us. And so, not knowing what to expect, we must roll VT.

What comes next is a pick ‘n’ mix of TV shows, newsreels, and adverts from this alternate Earth which demonstrate the tragic situation they have finally found themselves in. These pictures were meant to be from the day their Earth died, but sadly it seems as though these Other Earthlings were too caught up in their capitalist consumerism to adequately pay attention to the impending doom which they had brought upon themselves. We see from the newsreels that those who speak out against the governing bodies are quickly silenced, and that experts and specialists are summarily ignored when they try to warn of the upcoming dangers.

While these shows and reels are really supposed to be a mirror for how we in this world are treating our only home, they are ultimately used for comedy. The resulting five minutes then becomes a mash-up of sketches, flitting around like The Fast Show or Rick and Morty’s Interdimensional Cable, to throw up a variety of ideas loosely based around turn of the century Earth programming. In amongst all of this we have writers and directors, Mo (Bayliss) and Steph (Leigh) getting their faces into as many of the sketches as possible and playing a variety of different characters who don’t seem to give a monkey’s that the world is ending.

Ultimately, the premise for A Television Broadcast From Outer Space works well for what the writers, directors and producers wanted from their short film. It gives them a space to breathe and to play around with different types of genre and style of film, as well as allowing them to populate their alternate world with wilder, wackier versions of what they see here on Earth. The cinematography switches to match with the style of advert or show currently on screen, with new camera choices as well as production design and directorial decisions being evident in each new sketch being shown.

A Television Broadcast From Outer Space could very well be touted as a showreel for what Mo and Steph can do, behind the camera as well as on-screen, and from the variety on offer it’s easy to see that they know what they’re doing. Sadly, the funny bits are not all that funny, and the premise is something we’ve seen before elsewhere. The moral message gets lost somewhat in translation, and we have to wonder if a lot of what we’re seeing really has anything to do with the idea that their world is ending, as well as needing to heed the warning that it will happen to us too, if we’re not careful. Still, for a short nine-minutes, A Television Broadcast From Outer Space might well be the diversion you need to step back from the existential dread of a dead world, and laugh a little at the hopelessness of it all.