Somewhat derivative but reasonably watcable sci-fi thriller. In a world that is "The Walking Dead" with an ecological apocalypse instead of a zombie one, the remains of the government live in an artificial underground town somewhere between "Wayward Pines" and "The Truman Show", where everybody just loves crappy '80s Top 40 music.
The first season is a straight government/secret agent whodunnit thriller with a slight spritz of sci-fi, the second is a little more expansive, showing more of the world and the lead-up to the ecological disaster (refreshingly, a fairly well-done global tsunami and weather crisis caused by a volcanic eruption in Antarctica, not the result of human foolishness.) I enjoyed the second season a little bit more, although they're both decent at worst...
...except...
...for the '80s music. It's intrusive, and initially, very annoying, particularly that many episodes end with gratuitous, grating "slowcore", alt-folk, or dreary shoegaze-y versions of popular '80s hits that I really never needed to hear again, neither in the original nor in contrivedly fey cover versions.
It's not even interesting. I mean, do we really need to hear Phil Collins's second-string singles or Starship in this day and age? There was interesting music even in the '80s—if they had to revisit that decade, couldn't they have dug up something that showed a little taste outside of 100% commercial pop culture product?
However, for the most part, you can stop the episodes five minutes early and miss the worst of it (although be warned, when you see the teens in the library talking about how bad their parents' music was early in one first-season episode, be ready with your finger on the "Mute" button, unless you're up for a sneak attack of "We Built This City", surely a song nobody has ever been better off for having heard again.)
Overall, still, that's my only real complaint, and even if the omniscient feeling that every component part if it has been done before keeps it from being something really worth going out of your way for, it was not terrible, it's well-made, the plotting moves along in a fairly engaging way, and the acting is good. I'll watch season 3 if there is one.
But seriously, I hope they ditch the '80s music. That's great that someone listened to it when they were a kid and now they're a successful TV producer—they should be themselves a huge sound system and enjoy all they want it in the privacy of their home.
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