I like period pieces! I like science fiction! And, like peanut butter and chocolate, they go great together in BBC One’s adaptation of The War of the Worlds.

I am no military historian but this appears to be set between the World Wars, or in the runup to the first one. Surveyyyy says … this is Edwardian England, which runs from the turn of the century up to the Great War. Anyway, the Tommies have quite a scrap on their hands when the tripods pop out in Liverpool (this was filmed there, anyway) and start reorganizing the landscape. It reminds me of the reasons I enjoyed Resistance: Fall of Man, although that was the U.K. after World War II.

The War of the Worlds premieres later this fall. Rafe Spall (The Big Short) plays George and Amy is Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark, but IMDB also says Tomlinson is in Squadron 42, if that ever comes out). The young couple struggle to survive and build a life together despite, you know, aliens. Rupert Graves (Sherlock) and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting) also star.

H.G. Wells’ 1898 classic has been adapted into god-knows-how-many films and TV series in the 120 years since it published. Orson Welles (no relation) caused a bit of a stir on Halloween with its first multimedia adaptation, for radio, in 1938. More recently, Steven Spielberg took a crack at it with a 2005 movie, and Other Ocean Interactive interpreted it as a 2D platformer on Xbox 360 in 2011.