It seems like everyone is travelling through time these days.
If it isn’t Marty McFly in Back to the Future, it’s Rip Hunter and his motley crew in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, or good old Doctor Who, who rather delightfully and meta-richly ends up as one of the pop culture centrepieces of a brilliant new animation series by Leigh Lahav, Belle & Tina are Time Travellers.
Best friends who work in the last remaining DVD rental store in California, Belle and Tina are a study in opposites – Belle is an avid pop culture nerd, obsessed with Doctor Who and an avid movie watcher; Tina however is not, well not immediately anyway.
What Tina can do is invent things, in this case a time machine that takes you to the exact place and time of the movie you’re watching, which can be both really good, and um, not so good.
One thing that does work in its favour is that you can only stay in the period you’re in for as long as the movie runs which means you get pulled back to your own time as soon as the credits start to roll.
It’s a goofy, fun premise and it gives Belle & Tina, which crucially features female protagonists in a genre not exactly overburdened with women characters, a totally fresh take on a well-trod set of tropes.
The pilot has just been released – which you should totally watch from start to finish and luxuriate in the clever references inserted by Lahav and her creative partner/husband – and you can read a brilliant interview with her at The Mary Sue on how the series came into being and where they see it going.
Which admittedly could be the past, the future, who knows really … either way it’s going to be a fun ride!