tv: 2006-2007
Deadwood is finished, The Wire is about to get started. During this short break, I thought I'd write about four of the pilots I've seen in the last couple weeks. All of them are ensemble dramas, but otherwise very different shows. Kidnapped is the best of the bunch, really excellent. Smith is a classy affair, with a mind-blowing cast, but I doubt that it'll last beyond the first season (the too-good cast being the main reason). The other two, Jericho and Heroes, both with saga-ish plots, have sufficiently piqued my interest and I'll probably follow-up on the next few episodes at least. I'm focusing mainly the first two, because I've seen plenty of people mention Heroes and Jericho already.
** SPOILERS **
KIDNAPPED (NBC)
Timothy Hutton and Dana Delaney star in this thrilling drama as a wealthy and powerful New York couple whose teenage son has been kidnapped. With local law enforcement, the FBI, and a private negotiating team all working on the case, one might think the boy would be rescued in no time...but as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that this "perfect" family may be hiding a few dark secrets of their own.
It may be set in contemporary New York City, but Kidnapped felt to me a lot like one of those really well-made, character-driven British Saturday night mysteries. For one thing, there are the fantastically evocative names that are both character hints and indications of social rank: Cain, Conrad, Latimer, Alice, Virgil, Knapp. And there's the touch of the ominous about the high society Cain family, despite their warm banter. Why does the middle child - intelligent, philosophically-minded Leopold Cain (Will Denton) - have a personal bodyguard when his sisters don't? Does his kidnapping have anything to do with his father Conrad's (Timothy Hutton) business? And is it just coincidence that when Leopold's mother, Ellie Cain (Dana Delany), tries to get in contact with her father - a man so powerful that he's apparently in the media all the time - he can't be found? Every family, as they say, has something to hide. What is it that the Cains are keeping secret?
I don't know if you're familiar with British TV mysteries, but if you've ever watched an episode of Poirot, you'll know that they follow the case typically from two angles: the victims/suspects and the investigators. There is more than one main investigator in Kidnapped: there is Latimer King (Delroy Lindo), an old-school FBI department head who's about to retire but who's drawn into the Cain case; and Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), a former FBI agent who used to work with Latimer but who later struck out on his own. Knapp's one and only goal is to save the kidnapped kids. He has a better record than the FBI because he doesn't have the complication of having to also identify and prosecute the kidnappers. It's Knapp and his associate, Turner (Carmen Ejogo), that Conrad Cain hires to rescue his son.
The other day I tried watching a bit of Vanished, the other show beginning this fall that's centred around a disappearance, and found my attention wandering less than five minutes in. It wasn't terrible as such, it was just unremarkable in every way. The dialogue felt hokey, none of the actors were especially good, and the characters were flat, melodramatic (if it is possible to be both flat and melodramatic at the same time). Kidnapped is superior to it in every way, except maybe for its name.
Watch a series preview featuring interview clips with the cast and creators, thanks to Egotastic.
[Official Site]
**
SMITH (CBS)
This drama follows the adventures of a team of thieves who visit different cities to execute high-level crimes.
These crooks - played by Ray Liotta, Simon Baker, Johnny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, and Franky G. - are not in the style of the on-screen gangs in Ocean's 11 or Hustle. They are super professional and extremely capable, but if Danny Ocean's gang was like a troupe of players just happy to be turning a gig, this team is more packish - ruthless, efficient, and not against turning on one another if they feel themselves threatened. That might not be to everybody's tastes (one reviewer I read said that she started to enjoy the show only once she'd accept that she didn't like these people), but they are all riveting, well-acted characters, and we get to know a lot about them just by their entrances in the pilot. The show also hints at personal issues, problems, and possibilities for each, usually with no more than quick scene and a couple of lines, and I for one want to know more about them.
The leader and mastermind, Bobby Stevens (Liotta), lives a double life. He and his wife Hope, played by Virginia Madsen, are getting over a rough patch in their marriage. On the surface, though, it looks all good: kids, a suburban home, and a salesman's job as cover for his more...lucrative business. Which is planning and carrying out the jobs that Charlie, a high class middlewoman played by another Oscar nominee, Shohreh Aghdashloo, brings to him. I loved seeing Aghdashloo here, so handsomely respectable and sophisticated as Charlie. Hope doesn't like Charlie, and we get the feeling that she is not completely unaware of what Bobby does in his frequent out-of-town trips, even if they never talk about it.
We first see Simon Baker's character, shaggy-haired Jeff, on a surfboard. He's holidaying in Hawaii. When two locals tell him to get off the beach because it was private property, he walks calmly back to his jeep, takes out a rifle, and snipers both guys in the head. Jeff later picks up Tom (Lee Miller, acting in his natural British accent), who's newly out of goal and on parole. The two have the closest thing resembling a genuine friendship among the crew. Tom has a pre-rap history with beautiful Annie (Smart). She supplies IDs, taking advantage of a co-worker's drug problem by paying her to get the credit card numbers of high-rollers at the casino where they both work. Last of all, there's Joe (Franky G.) and his partner Shaun (Mike Doyle), who own a garage. Shaun has a wife with a wandering eye (wandering, that is, towards Joe), and a massive gambling debt that might land the whole team in trouble.
Some characters I found more charismatic than others; Baker (familiar to TV audiences from The Guardian) and Lee Miller are especially good. Franky G. is the clear weak spot in the cast, and Liotta's Bobby is someone you instantly mistrust. With his wide grins, smooth suits, and needling voice, your instincts tell you that this is not the good family guy who's perfect except for that one little detail about robbing people. Bobby could kill, and probably has done so in the past. He tells Charlie that he wants to go straight after just a couple more jobs. She smiles like she's heard it all before.
Final word: this show uses pop music, very well too, and very little score. Near the end, Imogen Heap's eerie a cappella "Hide and Seek" connects a number of scenes showing the aftermath of the robbery. It's the first moment of real poignancy, and also beauty.
[Official Site]
**
JERICHO (CBS)
After a nuclear disaster caused by several terrorist attacks destroys most of America, residents of a small Kansas town must come to terms with a new and very different reality.
I had the misfortune of watching a downloaded version that turned to have a temp soundtrack - or at least I hope it was a temp soundtrack. There was a lot of sappy country/rock music that did wonders to make a show seem cheesy, and a really obvious steal of John Powell's score for The Bourne Supremacy. This meant that it was about twenty minutes into the pilot before I was able to take it seriously. The post nuclear apocalypse Kansas of Jericho is not so awful as in The Day After - not yet, and not ever, I suspect. Compared to the memorably shocking UK telemovie, Threads, which I remember a history teacher making us watch in high school, it's dreadfully tame. Jericho feels too polished for a small town drama, and too cosy for the kind of subject matter that it dearly needs to go into if it's to be taken seriously. And the acting is mostly hit and miss, the dialogue is too deliberate, full of meaningful pauses. Only Gerald McRaney, who was in Deadwood last season playing George Hearst, stands out as Mayor Johnston Green, whose judgement and leadership skills are being tried, and we are not sure if he will be able to rise to the challenge. So far, though, he's doing just fine.
What the show wants to do, we feel, is reassert the primacy of family, community and the human spirit in times of disaster and looming anarchy, but the pilot ends on too light a note. Even Steven Spielberg did it better in War of the Worlds.
[Official Site]
**
HEROES (NBC)
Heroes is a serial saga about people all over the world discovering that they have superpowers and trying to deal with how this change affects their lives.
What do you want me to say? Ali Larter and the Petrelli brothers are hot.
This is saving-the-world-scale shit. Heroes feels decidedly comic-bookish, but is determined not to be reduced to the shallow end of comics, insisting that its characters are realistic and complex. Well, it succeeds up to a point. If you liked the Spiderman films, you'll probably like Heroes.
[Official Site]
** SPOILERS **
KIDNAPPED (NBC)
Timothy Hutton and Dana Delaney star in this thrilling drama as a wealthy and powerful New York couple whose teenage son has been kidnapped. With local law enforcement, the FBI, and a private negotiating team all working on the case, one might think the boy would be rescued in no time...but as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that this "perfect" family may be hiding a few dark secrets of their own.
It may be set in contemporary New York City, but Kidnapped felt to me a lot like one of those really well-made, character-driven British Saturday night mysteries. For one thing, there are the fantastically evocative names that are both character hints and indications of social rank: Cain, Conrad, Latimer, Alice, Virgil, Knapp. And there's the touch of the ominous about the high society Cain family, despite their warm banter. Why does the middle child - intelligent, philosophically-minded Leopold Cain (Will Denton) - have a personal bodyguard when his sisters don't? Does his kidnapping have anything to do with his father Conrad's (Timothy Hutton) business? And is it just coincidence that when Leopold's mother, Ellie Cain (Dana Delany), tries to get in contact with her father - a man so powerful that he's apparently in the media all the time - he can't be found? Every family, as they say, has something to hide. What is it that the Cains are keeping secret?
I don't know if you're familiar with British TV mysteries, but if you've ever watched an episode of Poirot, you'll know that they follow the case typically from two angles: the victims/suspects and the investigators. There is more than one main investigator in Kidnapped: there is Latimer King (Delroy Lindo), an old-school FBI department head who's about to retire but who's drawn into the Cain case; and Knapp (Jeremy Sisto), a former FBI agent who used to work with Latimer but who later struck out on his own. Knapp's one and only goal is to save the kidnapped kids. He has a better record than the FBI because he doesn't have the complication of having to also identify and prosecute the kidnappers. It's Knapp and his associate, Turner (Carmen Ejogo), that Conrad Cain hires to rescue his son.
The other day I tried watching a bit of Vanished, the other show beginning this fall that's centred around a disappearance, and found my attention wandering less than five minutes in. It wasn't terrible as such, it was just unremarkable in every way. The dialogue felt hokey, none of the actors were especially good, and the characters were flat, melodramatic (if it is possible to be both flat and melodramatic at the same time). Kidnapped is superior to it in every way, except maybe for its name.
Watch a series preview featuring interview clips with the cast and creators, thanks to Egotastic.
[Official Site]
**
SMITH (CBS)
This drama follows the adventures of a team of thieves who visit different cities to execute high-level crimes.
These crooks - played by Ray Liotta, Simon Baker, Johnny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, and Franky G. - are not in the style of the on-screen gangs in Ocean's 11 or Hustle. They are super professional and extremely capable, but if Danny Ocean's gang was like a troupe of players just happy to be turning a gig, this team is more packish - ruthless, efficient, and not against turning on one another if they feel themselves threatened. That might not be to everybody's tastes (one reviewer I read said that she started to enjoy the show only once she'd accept that she didn't like these people), but they are all riveting, well-acted characters, and we get to know a lot about them just by their entrances in the pilot. The show also hints at personal issues, problems, and possibilities for each, usually with no more than quick scene and a couple of lines, and I for one want to know more about them.
The leader and mastermind, Bobby Stevens (Liotta), lives a double life. He and his wife Hope, played by Virginia Madsen, are getting over a rough patch in their marriage. On the surface, though, it looks all good: kids, a suburban home, and a salesman's job as cover for his more...lucrative business. Which is planning and carrying out the jobs that Charlie, a high class middlewoman played by another Oscar nominee, Shohreh Aghdashloo, brings to him. I loved seeing Aghdashloo here, so handsomely respectable and sophisticated as Charlie. Hope doesn't like Charlie, and we get the feeling that she is not completely unaware of what Bobby does in his frequent out-of-town trips, even if they never talk about it.
We first see Simon Baker's character, shaggy-haired Jeff, on a surfboard. He's holidaying in Hawaii. When two locals tell him to get off the beach because it was private property, he walks calmly back to his jeep, takes out a rifle, and snipers both guys in the head. Jeff later picks up Tom (Lee Miller, acting in his natural British accent), who's newly out of goal and on parole. The two have the closest thing resembling a genuine friendship among the crew. Tom has a pre-rap history with beautiful Annie (Smart). She supplies IDs, taking advantage of a co-worker's drug problem by paying her to get the credit card numbers of high-rollers at the casino where they both work. Last of all, there's Joe (Franky G.) and his partner Shaun (Mike Doyle), who own a garage. Shaun has a wife with a wandering eye (wandering, that is, towards Joe), and a massive gambling debt that might land the whole team in trouble.
Some characters I found more charismatic than others; Baker (familiar to TV audiences from The Guardian) and Lee Miller are especially good. Franky G. is the clear weak spot in the cast, and Liotta's Bobby is someone you instantly mistrust. With his wide grins, smooth suits, and needling voice, your instincts tell you that this is not the good family guy who's perfect except for that one little detail about robbing people. Bobby could kill, and probably has done so in the past. He tells Charlie that he wants to go straight after just a couple more jobs. She smiles like she's heard it all before.
Final word: this show uses pop music, very well too, and very little score. Near the end, Imogen Heap's eerie a cappella "Hide and Seek" connects a number of scenes showing the aftermath of the robbery. It's the first moment of real poignancy, and also beauty.
[Official Site]
**
JERICHO (CBS)
After a nuclear disaster caused by several terrorist attacks destroys most of America, residents of a small Kansas town must come to terms with a new and very different reality.
I had the misfortune of watching a downloaded version that turned to have a temp soundtrack - or at least I hope it was a temp soundtrack. There was a lot of sappy country/rock music that did wonders to make a show seem cheesy, and a really obvious steal of John Powell's score for The Bourne Supremacy. This meant that it was about twenty minutes into the pilot before I was able to take it seriously. The post nuclear apocalypse Kansas of Jericho is not so awful as in The Day After - not yet, and not ever, I suspect. Compared to the memorably shocking UK telemovie, Threads, which I remember a history teacher making us watch in high school, it's dreadfully tame. Jericho feels too polished for a small town drama, and too cosy for the kind of subject matter that it dearly needs to go into if it's to be taken seriously. And the acting is mostly hit and miss, the dialogue is too deliberate, full of meaningful pauses. Only Gerald McRaney, who was in Deadwood last season playing George Hearst, stands out as Mayor Johnston Green, whose judgement and leadership skills are being tried, and we are not sure if he will be able to rise to the challenge. So far, though, he's doing just fine.
What the show wants to do, we feel, is reassert the primacy of family, community and the human spirit in times of disaster and looming anarchy, but the pilot ends on too light a note. Even Steven Spielberg did it better in War of the Worlds.
[Official Site]
**
HEROES (NBC)
Heroes is a serial saga about people all over the world discovering that they have superpowers and trying to deal with how this change affects their lives.
What do you want me to say? Ali Larter and the Petrelli brothers are hot.
This is saving-the-world-scale shit. Heroes feels decidedly comic-bookish, but is determined not to be reduced to the shallow end of comics, insisting that its characters are realistic and complex. Well, it succeeds up to a point. If you liked the Spiderman films, you'll probably like Heroes.
[Official Site]