The Big Door Prize review – Chris O’Dowd’s comic timing is immaculate in this beautifully light sci-fi

What if a barracuda came to tea? What if you won a ticket to a magical chocolate plant? What if an owl was hysterical of the dark? 

 What if a machine suddenly appeared in the grocery store of a small unpretentious city overnight that was suitable, for$ 2 and your social security number and fingerprints, to tell you your true life eventuality?

As infectious demesne go, that of The Big Door Prize is a great bone .

Acclimated from MO Walsh’s 2020 novel, the 10- part series uses the( largely unexplained) actuality of the machine to explore that ever-fascinating question of whether there's such a thing as too important knowledge, and how important verity humanity can bear.

Is the machine a emancipation or an electronic Pandora’s box?

That makes it sound weighty. It's not. It's funny, friendly and as beautifully light on its bases as you might anticipate from its creator, David West Read, who worked as a pen and patron on Schitt’s Creek.

 He's monstrously helped in this by the presence and immaculate ridiculous timing of Chris O’Dowd as gracious family man, history schoolteacher and good whistler Dusty Hubbard.

O’Dowd made his name playing definitive beta joker Roy in the weird and awful The IT Crowd and is the actor you want when you need to base any show with surreal or sci- fi rudiments in reality and keep the emotional stakes believable.