On tonight’s all-new episode of Quantum Leap, “A Decent Proposal,” Ben (Raymond Lee) leaps into the body of a female bounty hunter in 1980’s Los Angeles. Last week SciFi Vision spoke with director Rachel Talalay (Doctor Who,The Flash) in an exclusive interview about creating the time period and some of the unique parts of the experience. 

The 80s was a time Talalay was happy to be recreating. “That's what's great about time travel shows, you never know what you're going to get,” the director told SciFi Vision. “So, it was really nice to get something that I was comfortable with.” 

 “I was such a passionate punk,” she added. “…I remember discovering the Go Go's and giving it to my kid sister as the coolest pop punk. I was in the Whisky a Go Go in the early 80s, so it just felt like a complete fit.” 

This, however, did present a problem. “The challenge, of course, was that all of these things that I love about the 80s LA, many have disappeared,” Talalay explained, saying that she went to her own photographs. “The first time I visited LA was in '81, so I pulled out some photographs that I took of landmarks from '81. Of course, they're not there anymore.” 

Based on the book Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda, the Starz series The Serpent Queen gives a contemporary look at Catherine (Samantha Morton)’s rise to power, told through flashbacks from her teenage years through adulthood.

Recently, to promote the series, SciFi Vision spoke with writer and executive producer Justin Haythe and executive producer Erwin Stoff about creating the series.

According to Haythe, they became aware of the project ten years ago when friend and executive producer Francis Lawrence had read a piece about Catherine and told them about it. “It was really specifically about Catherine, Diane and Henry, this unusual love triangle,” Haythe told SciFi Vision, saying that the project went away, but then the book became available again. “The nature of the business had changed,” he explained, “because it really is a story you want to tell in an extended format. Suddenly, the television business had gotten to where it was, and and Francis and Erwin said, ‘Hey, it's available again, what do you think? Have a read.’ I did, and I immediately saw this possibility of telling a singular story of a particular tone, a particular voice, and one that was apt for our times.”

Tonight, Starz airs an all-new episode of the historical drama, The Serpent Queen. The series is a contemporary take on the rise to power of Catherine de Medici, told through flashbacks from her teenage years and through adulthood. Young Catherine is played by actress Liv Hill, with Samantha Morton playing the elder Catherine.

Hill admitted that playing Catherine de Medici was a bit daunting once she learned more about her. “I didn't know who she was beforehand, to be honest,” the actress told SciFi Vision during a recent interview. “Then, when I read about her, and I realized her notorious, infamous reputation as a sort of evil queen…it was a gift of a character to play. Also, the idea of playing Samantha Morton young was also a little bit overwhelming.”

Acorn TV’s Recipes for Love and Murder, which is based on the book series by Sally Andrew and was adapted for television by Karen Jeynes, takes place in a small town in South Africa. When a woman who writes advice columnist Tannie Maria (Maria Doyle Kennedy) ends up murdered, Maria and her colleague, journalist Jessie September, played by Kylie Fisher, partner up to find answers, against police advice. Can they track down the killer before it’s too late?

Recipes for Love and Murder was the first big role for costar Fisher, who spoke recently with SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview. The star didn’t read the book until after doing her role research so she could create her own version. “I kind of didn't want to initially read it,” said Fisher, “because the book is different to the adaptation, and I didn't want to get a preconceived notion of the character from the book. So, as we were doing filming, I was reading the book, and I was like, ‘This is what [Sally Andrew] says about the character, and this is what Karen’s written. Where does my understanding of the character also meet with these two versions of the story?”

The actress also pulled from her real life to find Jessie. “I identify with Jessie and the fact that we're both from the same racial background as well,” she told the site. “I didn't grow up in a small town; I grew up in Dubai, but my family is from South Africa, and we came back every single year.”

In Reboot, which premiered Tuesday, Hulu decides to revive and update a fictional sitcom from the early 2000s, “Step Right Up,” reuniting the dysfunctional cast. Eager to restart their careers, but full of insecurities and hangups, the performers try to find their way as they learn how much things have changed.

The series comes from the mind of Modern Family’s Steve Levitan, which was what really attracted star Keegan-Michael Key, who plays Reed Sterling, to the project. “[It was] the pedigree of Steve Levitan really more than anything,” the actor told SciFi Vision during a recent exclusive interview. “When we first discussed the show at the beginning, I was like, Modern Family is such a bonafide solid show that I [want] to be involved with something that would be of that caliber.”

It isn’t just the showrunner that makes the job enjoyable, however. “I would say the easiest thing, really, is that I have such a wonderful collaborative cast to work with, and that makes almost everything else easier,” said Key.

Tonight, NBC premieres the anticipated new Quantum Leap series. The series picks up some thirty years after Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) disappeared after stepping into the Quantum Leap accelerator. A new team has been put together, led by physicist Ben Song (Raymond Lee), to bring the project up to date and figure out what went wrong originally. When Song makes an unauthorized leap without telling anyone, the team, including his fiancé Addison (Caitlin Bassett), who serves as his helpful hologram, is left to figure out why.

The series may technically be a sequel, but according to showrunner and executive producer Martin Gero, who recently talked to SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview, you don’t need to see the original to enjoy and understand the new series. “The great news is, you don't need to do that at all,” said Gero. “Anything that you wouldn't understand will be explained in the body of the episode. So, [it’s] not like a here are the ten episodes you should watch of Quantum Leap to understand it; we're going to do all that work for you.”

He did add, however, that there would be some Easter eggs for fans of the original.

Tonight, STARZ premieres the series Serpent Queen, based on the book Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda. The historical drama tells the story of Catherine de Medici’s rise to power, with a contemporary edge. The story is told by Catherine (Samantha Morton) to her new servant, Rahima (Sennia Nanua) via flashbacks.

Playing someone like Catherine de Medici could easily be a daunting task, and Morton tried not to think about it, lest she become overwhelmed. “I approached her like I'd approach any other character,” the actress told SciFi Vision during a recent exclusive interview. “[It] is just trying to find the truth and be in the moment and understand the story and understand what people needed me to do and what their motivations were and to try and find a balance with all of that. But there's no denying that she's somebody that's incredibly formidable, and there was a level of expectation to get it right.”

Based on the bestselling novel by Alex Scarrow, Last Light, which premieres today on Peacock, follows petro-chemist Andy Yeats (Matthew Fox), who on a business trip to the Middle East, finds himself in the middle of an international crisis and separated from his family when the world’s oil supply becomes unusable.

Director Dennie Gordon, who recently talked to SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview, spoke to some of the challenges of bringing the series to television. “There were many challenges, but, of course, that's what makes us excited,” the director told the site. “Part of it was finding these locations and being able to make this an international show on on our rather small budget; that was tricky. The cast came together very quickly. I was thrilled, because I got my first choices everywhere, but I think it was [challenging] operating in a foreign country, directing in several different languages. We had German speakers, we had Czech, we had French, we had Arabic; we were everywhere. [It was] just a lot of pulling all these people together. There was just so much collaboration…Bringing all these people together, it ended up feeling like behind the scenes we were as global as our story.”

Tomorrow Peacock releases it’s new limited series Last Light, based on Alex Scarrow’s bestselling novel of the same name. The thriller tells the story of a family separated in the middle of the chaos, when the world’s oil becomes unusable, and it sets off a chain reaction across the planet. Joanne Froggatt stars as Elena Yeats, wife to Andy Yeats (Matthew Fox), one of the world's leading petrol-chemical engineers.

Froggatt, who spoke with SciFi Vision in a recent exclusive, took inspiration for the character of Elena from a variety of different places. “I don't think I ever, or very rarely, unless I'm playing a real person, draw on sort of a specific person or anything like that,” said the actress. “I just do it in layers, really. I start, obviously, with the script and what the script’s telling me, and then I do as much research as I really need to do about the subject matters involved.”

Today Peacock releases the limited series, Last Light, based on the bestselling novel by Alex Scarrow. Last Light tells the thrilling story of the chaos that is a result of the world’s oil supply becoming unusable, and the family separated by the crisis.

Amber Rose Revah plays the part of Mika Bakhash, a woman with connections in the British government, who partners with Andy Yeats (Matthew Fox), the world’s leading petro-chemical engineer.