'La Brea' review: We would like some nuts with all that cheese

'Hold on... when you said 'prehistoric' I immediately thought 'dinosaur' and then I got worried we might bump into my old boss, Hank Voight.' Photos: HBO GO

First of all, let's address the show's title. La Brea, the new sci-fi adventure yarn available on HBO GO, is apparently named for the La Brea Tar Pits, a group of asphalt pools in a Los Angeles park that have been a huge source of fossils from the Ice Age (and thereabouts).

"La Brea" is also Spanish for "the tar", which kind of makes the name redundant ("the The Tar Tar Pits", which sounds more like a speech and dental issue than a prehistoric relic), and harks back to the hilariously named The La Trattoria from Hugh Grant's Mickey Blue Eyes.