The Hot Zone

The cast is excellent, but they can't save the bad writing and worse pacing. I read the Richard Preston book back in 1994, and again last month when I heard about this miniseries. The book is an accurate accounting of the real events of 1989, and it's an edge-of-your-seat exciting read. This miniseries takes the same event and manages to drag it out with unnecessary backstories, wooden dialogue, and a dozen cliches. Then there are the blatantly incorrect representations of protocol in a lab environment. (I was in the medical field in 1989, and we did have strict ppe protocols.) My advice is to treat this as pure fiction, loosely based on the facts of the actual events. Get the true story from the book.

Hot Zone: Anthrax explores aspects of the 2001 anthrax scares in ways I never heard at the time. I felt they gave away the conclusion a tad too early, and the timing feels weird (it apoears the investigation is happening weeks or months after 9/11, but in reality the investigation didn't conclude for 7 years). However, most of the acting is wonderful! A few anachronisms were distracting, like a Keurig, wall-mounted flat screen, and center-parted hairstyles were big misses for a 2001 setting, whereas Hot Zone series 1 was better about time period accuracy.

Season 1 about Ebola was great.

Good actors, nice settings and a contagious disease. Exciting and scary.

I was hoping that season 2 would continue the story especially since the end of season 1 mentioned "Island of the plagues" and the idea that there was a place where multiple viruses were mixing had me intrigued.

Instead we got season 2 about Anthrax and it feels like every other episode from CSI.

Season 1 gets an 8/10.

Season 2 ... ugh, snooze.

Folks, c'mon. What happened to watching a show for entertainment value? It's "based on," not a documentary.

Stop getting bent out of shape and just watch it. Or don't. I liked it. Especially coming from a book, there is always going to be a high level creative license involved to create the drama, suspense and fear.

First the show is neither great nor bad, it's just another inspired by from a book story with some really good actors and some good new faces. The story though should scare everyone because it is when not if we will see Ebola outside of Africa again. The dramatization to push that point home is where the show differs from the book, facts, and the actual true story based on several articles I have read.

I've not read the book, but I have read articles checking on the story accuracy and it probably deserves a C at best for how faithful it is and an A for making sure to repeat the words that it is inspired by a true story. Some of the errors are general that things are/were simply not the way it is told, and some of the errors challenge the words inspired by because the story is changed from the actual events in fairly dramatic ways.

Having said all that, it's better than many other stories (like the Spanish Princess for example), and the acting is considerably better. Take the review with a grain of salt as 5 people rated this at 4.3 before it even aired, and as you can see for another review someone watched 5 minutes and made a decision.

If nothing else, it should scare the absolute socks off everyone because where the story deviates from fact, it shows us what it could be like old Europe with the number of dead we could have had.