Strange Angel

It's a vanishingly rare occurrence for the occult to crop up in popular entertainment outside of the horror genre, but "Strange Angel" is that rare breed.

If you dial back a few decades from the birth of the 1960's counter-culture in California and look for the precursors of psychedelia, LSD & Hippies, you could trace some of its parentage to the bohemian experimentalists in "Strange Angel".

It's 1939 and as William Gibson would say, the future just isn't very evenly distributed yet. Jack Parsons can see the future is in space. That still sounds futuristic when Elon Musk talks about it in 2018 and like Musk, Parsons wants to do something to make it happen. What happens next is the true story of the man who helped spark that future and his unlikely tutelage under the teachings of Aleister Crowley.

One episode in and this is already looking good. I'm especially enjoying Rupert Friend's turn as a wild eyed mercurial next door neigbour, who initiates/baptises Jack into the Crowleian mysteries via a swimming pool.

I'll be curious to see how this show does. The real Parsons died at age 37 under mysterious circumstances, but certainly packed enough drama into his short life to fill out several seasons if it all works out for "Strange Angel".

The is an excellent show that I desperately hope finds its audience. It is an excellent portrayal of late1930s/early 1940s California--as well as the seeds of the counter-culture movement and the ground-work for the evolutionary technological leaps made in California's aerospace industry (and ,later, silicon valley). It is told through an examination of Jack Parsons, a 'real-life' founder of the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at Cal tech that would go on to become the center of the intellectual world for all things related space exploration.

Much like Kerouac's New York of the 1950s, California in the 30s was chafing against the "High Church" Protestant paradigm of what it meant to be 'American'. It was a hotbed of spiritualist movements, with reading groups and acolytes of Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, and a variety Rosicrucian/Kabalist/Hermeticist, teachings, popping up on every corner.

Into this mix, add the influx of serious intellect from Europe as it sought to escape Hitler's rise, and you have an extremely fertile ground for open-minded questioning of 'established truth' and important intellectual break-throughs. You also have the ingredients of what may become a ground-breaking tv show.

One thing that truly sets this series apart is that whenever this period of exploration into the Western mystical tradition is treated at all (in TV or Movies), it usually turns into a cheap excuse for regurgitating tired "Manson Family" tropes. Eastern Spiritual traditions = Good; Western Spiritual Traditions = satanic/bad. This show offers hope for avoiding this dichotomy as it explores the spiritual yearnings of occult seekers as essential to their creativity in the non-spiritual (real-world) realm.

I do worry a bit it will eventually play up the sensationalist, 'manson family/satanic panic', trope; If for nothing else, simply to attract more eyeballs. But at least the first handful of episodes are truly an excellent exploration of a unique cauldron of sociological, historical, and spiritual ingredients that work in California at the time.

This was the most intriguing show I've seen in years. To bad the powers that be have no confidence in those that watch. The acting was very good and the production excellent. The pace was a little slow and the storyline super complex. Kudos to the writers for their handling of the start of space travel, occultism, WWII, complex personalities and out and out madness so well.

The main character, Jack Parsons, was one of the most intelligent and odd people who were most influential to the future of America during the late 30s and early 40s. I think the series did a great job with extremely difficult subject matter. I had no problem following the story.

Compared with most TV series today points out some huge obstacles for this series. Watching this requires a longer attention span than Spongebob and more intelligence than the family dog. The writers had a LOT of very different subjects to educate themselves about - Then they had to educate the audience. Everyone involved obviously worked very hard to produce a series worth the time to watch. I wish that Hollywood thought better of their audience or maybe realized that curious Intelligent people are consumers too.

Maybe if we are lucky someone else will pick this series up and finish out the originally planned five seasons. I'm not holding my breath.

This show is fascinating and top notch in every way script/acting/production. I hope it is finding its audience and gets to finish telling it's amazing story!

I've watched the first 6 episodes so far. I think the story line is good and the casting is fab. I think the show explores a lot of social restrictions and thinking from this era in an accurate way. The story of Jack Parsons is an interesting one, and it works well as a TV series.

It's not heavy on shock value (lazy writing) which could have been a problem with the topics of occult and sex parties. I think the pace is a little slower than I would like but it's acceptable. Surprised by the low rating as this show is definitely higher quality than most of the stuff that is out there. Most comments are favorable.