A mother and her son are taking a road trip to drop him off at college, but there’s an insidious evil that’s trying to stop them every way it can.

This is more like it – the first episode of this season that actually felt like old school Twilight Zone. It would have been a far better opener than The Comedian, but here as the third show in the run it gives a real nostalgic buzz.

It’s a combination of all those gadgety/gimmicky episodes (A Kind of a Stopwatch, Nick of Time – the devil’s head fortune teller even appears!) and the ‘don’t go back to your small town home’ shows (Walking Distance, A Stop at Willoughby, Young Man’s Fancy), underlined with a very real-world issue – that of racism. And ignoring all the sci-fi trappings, the message here is very clear: sometimes, whatever you do, you can’t escape bigotry.

The moral of the story is hammered home very literally, and it’s a shame that a story that would have been very relevant during the show’s original 50s/60s run is still so relevant today. Sanaa Latham (Alien vs Predator) and her son are fated to keep being stopped by the same cop, Officer Lasky (an excellent Glenn Fleshler – True Detective). Whatever they do, they can’t escape him – from taking a shortcut to buying the officer some pie.

The explanation of the device is of course typical Twilight Zone mumbo jumbo (black magic from the old world) but that doesn’t matter – it’s all about the story and the emotion. Director Gerard McMurray (The First Purge) does a great job in ramping up the tension, and by the time you’re in the show’s coda you’re praying that everything is going to be ok. Oh, and there’s 1015 mentioned again…

Verdict: The best episode yet of this new iteration of the show’s revival. Preachy, thought-provoking, twisty and intriguing. You’ve entered… The Twilight Zone. 9/10

Nick Joy