Eerie, Indiana

Author: José Rivera And Karl Schaefer

The weird small town is a classic for science fiction, from Twin Peaks to Super 8, there's little a writer loves more than getting to play with the inherent strangeness of isolation in the modern age. Eerie, Indiana takes full advantage of that, giving us a bizarre little town that is full of strangeness. The stories are fun, funny, and more than a little post-modernist, with self-referential humor flying all over the place, including an episode where a script for the show Eerie, Indiana, makes everyone behave as if they're making Eerie, Indiana! The series took some silly premises and made them fun, and sometimes scary, but always worked with the feeling of a big screen feature film mentality in an hour-long television form. This sense of inner bigness may have come from the fact that the series featured a lot of incredibly talented filmmakers directing and writing each episode, like Joe Dante and Bob Balaban, and early appearances from stars like Nikki Cox and Tobey McGuire! Why it's on the list: It only got a single season, but Eerie, Indiana managed to gain a strong following around the world!