TV's twisted love of time travel

Why TV is overrun with series about hopping back and forth across years, decades, and even centuries

The crew of Making History.
(Image credit: Facebook.com/MakingHistoryFOX)

Television is practically overrun with shows about time travel.

In any given week lately, you could watch 12 Monkeys (based on the trippy time-hopping movie), Frequency (another movie adaptation, about a 21st century cop who can contact her father in the '90s), Time After Time (yet another movie adaptation, following author H.G. Wells as he chases Jack the Ripper), 11.22.63 (based on Stephen King novel's about a modern English teacher who travels back to early '60s Dallas to stop the JFK assassination), Timeless (about a band of secret agents trying to undo timeline-damage), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (basically the same premise as Timeless, but with comic book superheroes), The Flash (which can't seem to stop integrating tales of time travel into its larger plot arcs), and Making History (a kind of sitcom spin on Hot Tub Time Machine, following ordinary dudes on a strange chronological journey).

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Noel Murray

Noel Murray is a freelance writer, living in Arkansas with his wife and two kids. He was one of the co-founders of the late, lamented movie/culture website The Dissolve, and his articles about film, TV, music, and comics currently appear regularly in The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.