'Halt and Catch Fire': TV review
'Halt and Catch Fire' makes a persuasive case for a subversive notion: that the people who jump-started the personal computer revolution of the early 1980s might be people for whom we could be happy.
Much as we like our personal computers, we often think of the people who popularized them as arrogant geeks who make more money than they can ever spend while disdaining those of us who simply want their dumb machines to be logical and reliable.
'Halt and Catch Fire' a fictional story, focuses on three neurotic geniuses who understood 30 years ago what seems self-evident now about the potential of computers.
Lee Pace plays Joe MacMillan, who has a vision and an obsession with pursuing it. Scoot McNairy is Gordon Clark, who has designed a breakthrough but given up on getting anyone to buy it. Mackenzie Davis is Cameron Howe, the awkward and cynical misfit who knows what computers could be but spends her days playing repairing VCRs for $3.25 an hour and playing arcade games.
They get together when MacMillan pulls off a long-shot gamble to get corporate backing for their radical notions.
As they go to work, Clark must try to salvage his marriage to the understanding Donna (Kerry Bishé ), while old-liners at the company try to undercut these newcomers at every turn.
It all adds up to a promising, surprisingly lively and fast-paced drama that humanizes those early computer geeks.
With strong performances by Pace, McNair and Davis, we can root for them even as we mutter darkly about whoever signed off on Windows 8.
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