War of the Worlds is a British/French television show taking place now during an alien invasion. At first hundreds of car-sized spherical objects strike the Earth, mainly in large urban areas. As governments and people try to figure out what's going on the objects emit a pulse killing all people nearby except ones underground or otherwise safe from EM radiation. This conveniently means that the cast stays fairly small and that the few alien machines that go around killing survivors are a credible threat.

Over the course of eight episodes the show revolves around various groups of people:

• Catherine (Léa Drucker), an astronomer who first recorded the alien objects approaching Earth, Colonel Mokrani (Adel Bencherif) and his platoon, at a remote observatory.
• Bill (Gabriel Byrne), a university professor, with his ex-wife Helen (Elizabeth McGovern) trying to find their son.
• Sarah (Natasha Little), a mom with two teenagers, Tom (Ty Tennant) and Emily (Daisy Edgar-Jones), the latter blind but recovers her sight after the alien invasion.
• Jonathon (Stephen Campbell Moore), Sarah's husband trying to return home, with single mom Chloe (Stéphane Caillard) and her teenage son Sacha (Mathieu Torloting), the latter two harboring terrible secrets.
• Kariem (Bayo Gbadamosi), an African illegal immigrant.

The show is fairly well done. Slow paced and suspenseful. The introduction and later usage of the alien warbots is quite chilling. Lots of mysteries abound: why only a few warbots to finish the job, why did the aliens come here, why are some people "connected' with the aliens. The last episode gives us a bit of hope -- a possible weapon against the aliens -- along with a couple of surprises -- a reveal of an "alien" operator and possibly regular military in force.

An interesting science fiction show and I hope to someday watch the second season.