'Calls' dials streaming TV back to what creepily feels like radio drama

The newish medium of streaming is perhaps inevitably taking TV to its logical endpoint -- namely, a weird return back to radio. At least, that's the sense watching (or really, listening to) "Calls," an Apple TV+ throwback to Orson Welles' famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast mixed with "The Twilight Zone," reminding us that sometimes what you hear is scarier than what you see.

Adapted from a French series, the show employs minimal graphics -- abstract waves and lines, coupled with what amount to word balloons of the dialogue -- as the stories unfold over nine episodes, most running less than 20 minutes. Directed by Fede Álvarez ("Don't Breathe"), the creepy threads play out through a series of seemingly unrelated phone calls, each featuring characters involved in stories that involve strange, supernatural phenomena. In one, for example, a man calls home after a fight with his wife, unaware that vast amounts of time are elapsing on the other end of the line during what he's perceiving as mere minutes.