I was going to mention that. In that genre Vonnegut published Timequake in 1997, but Grimwood was before even Groundhog Day. Then again Billy Pilgrim was already “unstuck in time” in Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969.
I found a promo on YouTube.
I was a fan of a limited series called Day Break (2006) starring Taye Diggs. He plays a police detective framed for murder. He has to relive the day until he not only proves who really did it, but has to make certain other events come out right too. The network cancelled it halfway through its run, and I was mad as hell. They did eventually make the remaining episodes available online. It doesn’t appear to be available for streaming anywhere now but you can still buy it on DVD.
Isn’t it really? The MacGuffin isn’t the same as Groundhog Day (and it’s deliberately invoked rather than being something that just happens) but it’s a repeat of the same couple of hours over and over until the problem is fixed. The ending is…problematic though.
I guess it depends how you define it but for the description of the OP it fits. I agree with you about the ending.
If we are doing tv shows here too I will add the most recent Simpsons Treehouse of Horror did a spoof of Russian Doll.
Don’t bother with Before I Fall. It is bad, with huge plot holes.
The Veronica in a group of Heathers is stuck in a time loop. First time through she is in a terrible automobile accident. She prevents that in future loops, but there is always a loop. Eventually she finds out the cause of the accident–the girl she and the other Mean Girls have been bullying commits suicide by jumping in front of a car. (First time it was their car, other times a different one. She tries to talk suicide girl out of it a couple times, then finally breaks the loop by pushing suicide girl out from in front of the car, getting herself killed (permanently) in suicide girl’s place. And yet, at no time does she try to alert any adults that the girl might be thinking of suicide.
Not a perfect fit but I think the old '60s series The Prisoner deserves a mention.
Fantastic show. Deserved better, but thankful that they made them all available online, one of the earliest (if not the first) to do that. I could just imagine where it might go next - a second season with other characters and a new story, then a third, but with a fourth and final they could’ve all come together and experience the day individually in different ways, having to find each other and figure out a strategy.
I guess there’s still meat on the bones of this idea to attempt it again one day.
I remember watching that. At some point during the second episode I wondered if it was just a repeat but there definitely were some noticeable differences. As they went on it became a real mind trip.
For those who don’t know, this Endless Eight arc of the series was a literal 8-episode arc of the same sequence of events repeating each episode. The episodes vary slightly in their dialogue, POVs of particular scenes, and there is a sense that some characters start noticing something, but it’s almost the same as watching a single episode eight times in a row.
It is a bit of a high learning curve to jump into though. A basic plot outline:
Haruhi Suzumiya is a very powerful reality warper, who is completely unaware of that but is obsessed with science fiction and fantasy. Her group of friends are secretly SFish characters–an alien android, a time traveler, and a ESPer–who (along with one completely normal guy) try to keep her calm and happy and normal lest her moods have a destructive effect on the world and the universe. (It is implied that maybe aliens, time-travelers, and ESPers exist in the first place only because she willed it.
Even the first season was weird, intentionally airing the (story arc-dependant) episodes out of chronological order.
I just watched the season 5 The Magicians episode “Oops I Did It Again”, where a time loop was involved. Interesting that
- They figure out they are in a loop early
- There is reference to Groundhog Day, Russian Doll, Star Trek, et al
Brian
One of the episodes of the rebooted Twilight Zone on CBS All Access was like this. Spoilered because it’s not obvious what is going on at first:
Season 2, episode 9 “Try, Try”
Run Lola Run where Lola has twenty minutes to raise 100,000 Deutschmarks to save her boyfriend’s life and keeps repeating failed attempts. Several moments later in the film suggest that she’s reliving the same twenty minutes (rather than just presenting alternate “what if” versions of the story).
Problematic? I thought it was pretty straightforward. I mean any film that deals with time travel and parallel realities can pretty much make it up as they go along but the general concept seems fairly unremarkeable. I really enjoyed it, as I did with “moon” also by Jones and one that deals some some related issues.
Problematic in that…
He took over the body of another person who presumably ceased to exist at that point.
Two not yet mentioned:
TV: The X-Files, “Monday”, S6E14.
Film: Triangle, with what appears to be nested loops.
I don’t see that as problematic,
He entered a parallel world, the inhabitants of which didn’t exist at all until it was created by his actions. He didn’t erase a person, The reality which carried on with him in it after his life-support was turned off could never have existed without him being in it.
I still find the same problem in that scenario.
Here is an interview with Jones where he gives his interpretation (spoiler tags because the preview has spoilers).
Right now on Hallmark, the wife is watching a 2017 film called Valentine’s Again. Something about a gypsy curse making a lady relive the same Valentine’s Day over and over.
This was very fun, we watched it a couple of weeks ago. Only complaint is that the ending, well, it did not really have a very good one, or it’s set to go straight into BL2.
It’s not so widely seen as to have discussion of the ending online…