Visiting With Tom Hanks in Electric City

"It's best to ask no questions and be told no lies, here in the Electric City," says Tom Hanks as Cleveland Carr in an episode of Electric City.  http://electriccity.yahoo.com

Hanks' new web series is something he thought about nearly eight years ago. It takes place in the familiar dystopia of a sci-fi standard - the post-apocalyptic society.

It looks like a low-budget TV animated series (produced by the Indian media company Reliance Entertainment, with Hanks' own production company, Playtone).

Equally interesting is that it's another big name entering original programming. In this case, it is on Yahoo, but it's similar to what Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have been doing lately.

Jerry Seinfeld's new series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, is about Jerry picking up a comedian friend in a vintage car, driving around, and getting some coffee. The first one is with Larry David who observes that Jerry has "finally done the show about nothing."

Hanks doing the voice work

Electric City has 20 episodes of five minutes each. I watched 3 so far and may continue. Maybe not. It reminds me a bit of reading a comic book series.

Hanks' character is a "grid operative" in a place where some "climate-based event" has left a dangerous, bleak, and electricity-starved world. Mad Max minus the gasoline? Not really.

I applaud the effort and the fact that it is free online. Let's see where these efforts go.