The Pitch: It’s a unusually prolific time for online game TV variations set within the post-apocalypse: HBO’s The Final of Us supplied prestige-drama ruminations on the bodily and ethical crumbling of a world beset by zombies, and Netflix’s short-lived Resident Evil took a barely campier strategy. Now, new participant Peacock has logged on, this time for a wacky, chintzy tackle a decidedly much less up-to-date online game collection: Twisted Steel.

On this model, Twisted Steel is extra of a Mad Max story — an apocalyptic occasion has left America in tatters, with roving gangs of gimmicky vehicular tyrants setting upon no matter poor soul wanders out from the few walled cities that stay. Their solely hope for provides comes within the type of “milkmen,” who ferry items from one metropolis to the opposite. One such milkman is John Doe (Anthony Mackie), an amnesia-ridden driver who loves quips as a lot as he loves blasting fools in his beat-up 2002 Subaru, Evelyn (“EV3L1N”).

Like so many of those tales, the final word “one final job” comes a-calling: He’s recruited by Raven (Neve Campbell), the mayor of the comfortable, fenced-in New San Francisco, to retrieve an vital merchandise from New Chicago and convey it again in ten days’ time. If he does it, he can take pleasure in paradise. However to take action, he’ll must outwit the hazards of the brand new world, from a tyrannical rent-a-cop with delusions of grandeur (Thomas Haden Church) to the psychotic Candy Tooth (performed by the hulking physique of AEW wrestler Samoa Joe and the baritone voice of Will Arnett). His solely ally on this combat is Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz), an unwitting passenger with mad axe-throwing expertise and vengeance on the mind.

An Axle to Grind: For these younger sufficient to not have the PlayStation 1 startup music burned into their cerebella, a primer: Twisted Steel was a gnarly, short-lived recreation collection set in a lethal demolition-derby match, the place over-the-top drivers used heavily-armed gimmick automobiles to smash, crash, and blast their enemies to kingdom come. The sport’s mascot? A laughing, homicidal clown named Candy Tooth, who blasts missiles out of a refurbished ice cream truck.

It’s not the strongest skeleton on which to hold a narrative, however Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (and author/director Michael Jonathan Smith of Cobra Kai) fill it in with loads of edgy gore and campy, self-referential humor. The upholstery is virtually soaked with the meta-chaos of Reese and Wernick’s prior work: Within the opening sequence, John narrates his manner by a wild car-based shootout in an deserted shopping center, Deadpool-style; later, two males are captured by a band of cannibals who mud them with lemon pepper seasoning to make them extra succulent. The apocalypse froze all of popular culture in 2002, so music is all Cypress Hill CDs, with decor that includes A Knight’s Story posters.

The arch model can get fairly grating typically, particularly within the early episodes the place the tee-hee-ain’t-I-a-stinker tone is all of the present has to go on. The price range can be one of many present’s biggest enemies: The vehicular fight the video games are identified for is usually bookended on both finish of the season, with a couple of respectable automotive stunts sprinkled all through. In any other case, the units and costumes really feel fairly low cost, and the camp tone can solely take such chintziness up to now. (For good and in poor health, Twisted Steel offers off the vibes of a late-aughts Sci-Fi Channel authentic collection: suppose Z Nation.)