NEW sci-fi drama Project Blue Book looks to have everything going for it. Executive produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Contact) it takes its title from the real life, top-secret investigations conducted by the US Air Force into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) from 1952 to 1969.

Think the geeky appeal of the X Files crossed with the debonair period style of Mad Men and you're on the right lines, with plenty of Cold War paranoia, horn rimmed glasses and shady looking men in trilby hats to keep you happy.

It stars Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, The Wire) as Dr J Allen Hynek, a brilliant yet under-appreciated college professor, who is recruited by the US Air Force to spearhead clandestine operation, Project Blue Book. Along with his partner, the debonair Air Force Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey), Hynek is summoned to investigate UFO sightings around the country and uses science to discover what really happened. However, when some encounters cannot be explained and cases remain open, he begins to suspect that he as been duped by the government into a larger conspiracy to cover up the truth.

Both leads perform admirably as they fall into the Mulder and Scully roles of sceptic and believer, with Quinn determined to explain away every flying saucer as a weather balloon, while the enquiring Hynek prefers to keep an open mind when presented with radioactive fighter planes and a pilot who's convinced he's had an extra-terrestrial dog fight.

One of Project Blue Book's main selling points is that Hynek was a real-life alien expert who developed the 'Close Encounter' classification system and was among the first people to conduct scientific analysis of reports and especially of trace evidence purportedly left by UFOs. It gives the drama a sense of credibility with each case based on an actual incident or historical event from one of the most mysterious eras in the history of the United States.

Quite how then the programme makers have turned this source material into an hour long snooze-fest is anyone's guess but Project Blue Book left me wondering whether its mixture of sci-fi elements, procedural and period detail did actually need an injection of monsters or at least some sexual tension between the two leads. Until then the truth is still out there.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/project-blue-book-fx-is-a-ufo-drama-that-remains-earthbound/