It was back to the rip-roaring 1990s Friday night at the Tribeca TV Festival. The Tribeca Film Festival offshoot hosted the world premiere of National Geographic’s loony and explosive limited series Valley of the Boom. Over the course of six episodes, the show charts the rise and subsequent bust of the dot-com bubble in the 1990s. The Tribeca TV audience was treated to the first two episodes followed by a lively panel with the show’s creator Matthew Carnahan, cast members Bradley Whitford, Steve Zahn, Lamorne Morris, and real-life subject Stephan Paternot, founder of TheGlobe.com.

Similar to National Geographic’s Mars, Valley of the Boom is a scripted/documentary hybrid. Using re-enactments, documentary interviews, fourth wall breaks, innovative editing, rap battles and interpretive dance, the series captures the hysteria and wildness of the early Internet days by playfully weaving together three storylines. The first thread followed is the tale of Netscape and the Internet browser wars. The second is the rise and fall of TheGlobe.com, one the Internet’s first social networking websites. And then the series digs in on Michael Fenne (AKA David Kim Stanley), an outlandish conman who tried to cash in on streaming video. Fenne founded Pixelon, a dot-com that promised better distribution of high-quality video over the Internet.

Among the real-life tech personalities featured in the series are Arianna Huffington, Mark Cuban, Netscape co-founders James Barksdale and Jim Clark, and TheGlobe.com co-founders Todd Krizelman and Stephan Paternot. Their interviews serve as narration for the story.

Matthew Carnahan, whose TV credits include House of Lies and Dirt, flexes his creative muscles with “Valley of the Boom,” pushing all sorts of boundaries. During the panel, it was no surprise he talked about how it was a fun story to tell. He also discussed the story’s importance, specifically Microsoft’s bullying of Netscape, and how it relates to what’s happening today, “It was kind of the beginning of a cyber kleptocracy. That’s important because now we’re seeing the reverberations of that kind of behavior with the way the Internet’s being governed and used and exploited.”

TheGlobe.com’s Stephan Paternot appeared to be blown away by the first two episodes. He commented on how authentic it all felt. He also discussed how believes it’s a good time to revisit how it all started, “We’re just discovering how dangerous the Internet has become.” He noted today’s issues with addiction and information being weaponized against us. He added, “What was that original utopia we all imagined and how do we get it back on track?”

National Geographic’s VALLEY OF THE BOOM. (National Geographic/Bettina Strauss)

Bradley Whitford is convincing as Netscape co-founder James Barksdale. Whitford said that he was drawn to the project because he was “dying to work” with Carnahan. As far as his relationship to technology and the Internet, Whitford explained, “This world that we live in has been very recently transformed in a really fundamental way and it scares me and its exciting. We live in the information age. It would be better to live in the wisdom age.”

The meaty role of Michael Fenne was what sold Steve Zahn on the project. Fenne was actually approached about being involved in the series. Carnahan spent hours with him on the phone, but ultimately it was too confronting for Fenne. He believed a different reality. However, it doesn’t takeaway from what Zahn delivers. His performance as the unstable, bleached blonde, hustler is absolutely transformative (can we give this guy an Emmy?). Zahn was sent his scripts piecemeal and boarded after only reading a couple of episodes, “I couldn’t wait to read more scripts.”

We also can’t wait to see how the rest of the series unfolds. Valley of the Boom premieres on National Geographic in January 2019. Check out the trailer below.

The Tribeca TV Festival runs September 20-23, 2018. For the full lineup visit Tribecafilm.com.