Amazing Stories: The Forgotten Steven Spielberg Two-Season Masterpiece of Sci-Fi Fantasy
An iconic 80s series drew Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Zemeckis to the director’s chair—proof that television could command Hollywood’s biggest talents.
People tend to put Steven Spielberg in a neat little box labeled Big Movies Only. Not true. He has spent decades quietly (and not so quietly) shaping television too, and the best proof is a short, wild, and very expensive anthology he launched in the mid-80s: Amazing Stories.
How Spielberg Reclaimed TV In 1985
Before anyone knew him as the guy behind Jurassic Park or the cartoons that made after-school TV go feral (Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs), Spielberg was already cutting his teeth on the small screen. He directed for Night Gallery and Columbo, and made the TV movie Duel back in the 70s. In 1985 — the same year he helped produce Back to the Future — he came back to TV with a full-on mission: an NBC anthology series built to swing between genres and tones like it was nothing.
Amazing Stories was exactly that: big-hearted fantasy one week, hard sci-fi or horror the next, with different filmmakers dropping in to play. It lasted two seasons, totaling 45 episodes (not counting any spin-offs), which makes it both one of the most memorable and one of the harder-to-track-down anthologies from that era.
The Show In Motion
Spielberg himself set the tone with the pilot, Ghost Train — a wistful ghost story that is more about family and faith than jump scares. A lot of episodes were sparked by his own original ideas, and the vibe is extremely him: hope tucked inside spectacle.
Season Highlights And Who Showed Up
- Season 1: Fine Tuning (a clever riff that feels like it could have influenced Galaxy Quest years later); The Doll with John Lithgow; and Martin Scorsese’s Mirror, Mirror. Spielberg also directed The Mission, a fantasy war story starring Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland that plays as cinematically as anything in theaters back then.
- Season 2: The sandbox got even bigger with directors like Robert Zemeckis, Mick Garris, and Joe Dante. Standouts include Welcome to My Nightmare and Family Dog, plus a genre-blending thriller called Thanksgiving that somehow manages to scare you and lift you up at the same time.
Despite the creative run, ratings slipped in Season 2, and NBC pulled the plug. Fans who vibed with the show’s oddly specific mood were not thrilled.
That Amblin Glow, Even On Network TV
Visually, it is very 80s television — you can see the seams in the effects, even in the opening titles — but the Amblin DNA is everywhere. And back then, Spielberg’s producer touch usually meant a hit, which helps explain how he secured massive budgets for a network anthology and still asked NBC to remove his name from the marketing so the show could stand on its own. Strange request, fully granted.
It is also worth remembering: in the 80s, TV was not a magnet for A-list filmmakers. Yet Amazing Stories landed contributions from heavyweights like Peter Hyams and Clint Eastwood. Even with the guest talent, Spielberg’s supervising hand stays central throughout — the series has a unifying pulse that feels very much like his.
About That Reboot
Apple TV brought Amazing Stories back in 2020 with Spielberg on board as an executive producer. The effort was earnest, but the original’s genre-hopping magic didn’t really make the jump.
The Bottom Line
Amazing Stories is a two-season time capsule where 80s network television collides with Spielberg-scale ambition. It is messy in places, gorgeous in others, and full of big swings — the kind of series you do not forget, even if it is frustratingly tough to find.