The Twilight Zone

“The Twilight Zone (marketed as Twilight Zone for its final two seasons) is an American anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. Each episode presents a stand-alone story in which characters find themselves dealing with often disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering ‘the Twilight Zone,’ often with a surprise ending and a moral. Although predominantly science-fiction, the show’s paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show towards fantasy and horror. The phrase ‘twilight zone,’ inspired by the series, is used to describe surreal experiences. The series featured both established stars and younger actors who would become much better known later. Serling served as executive producer and head writer; he wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show’s 156 episodes. He was also the show’s host and narrator, delivering monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. Serling’s opening and closing narrations usually summarize the episode’s events encapsulating how and why the main character(s) had entered the Twilight Zone. … By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a prominent name in American television. His successful television plays included Patterns (for Kraft Television Theater) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (for Playhouse 90), but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling. … Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, would give him more freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings. ‘The Time Element‘ was Serling’s 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, however, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958. The show was a great success and enabled Serling to finally begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. Serling’s editorial sense of ironic fate in the writing done for the series was identified as significant to its success by the BFI Film Classics library which stated that for Serling ‘the cruel indifference and implacability of fate and the irony of poetic justice’ were recurrent themes in his plots. …”
Wikipedia
The 50 Best Episodes of The Twilight Zone (Video)
The Enduring Legacy of The Twilight Zone
W – List of The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) episodes
YouTube: The Twilight Zone – 1959 – TV Series – CBS

“Time Enough at Last” (Season 1, Episode 8)