This post contains some minor spoilers for the first episode of the Netflix series Travelers.

I tried watching the Netflix series Travelers. It’s about a group of people from a bleak far future who travel to our present to take over people’s bodies at the time of death, magically cure them of whatever killed them (stroke, drug overdose, whatever), and then set out to change events to prevent that bleak far future from occurring.

The series offers no explanation for how these people could come to exist if they are successful in changing the future, so it’s a very confused muddle to begin with. And in the initial episode (the only one I managed to sit through) one of the travelers refuses to aid a man having a heart attack because it was “his time to die”. I thought the point of the travelers coming back was to change things?

How can anyone turn out this drivel? How can anyone watch it?

I give it four stars out of ten. The production values are good and the acting is fine; it’s just the premise that is idiotic and the writing that is lame.

It stars and is produced by Eric McCormack, who probably ought to stick to what he does best. Say, what is that? Oh, actually I saw him on Broadway a few years ago in The Best Man; he was pretty good in that (he didn’t play the best man). And I understand he’s starring in a revived sitcom that’s doing pretty well.