White Collar

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Whiskey Cavalier–The next crimefighting duo series begins this week on ABC

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February 25, 2019

Review by C.J. Bunce

After the 2019 Academy Awards recognized genre films Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and gave top awards to Green Book and Roma, ABC aired the pilot for a new series. Whiskey Cavalier begins with a solid pilot episode, and you can find it in its weekly timeslot beginning Wednesday evening on ABC. It borrows from two familiar sources for network TV: the spy genre, like Mission: Impossible, iSpy, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Avengers, and Chuck, and the “will they or won’t they” investigation shows like Moonlighting, The X-Files, Bones, Castle, and Private Eyes. Whiskey Cavalier–the military/NATO spy call sign for FBI agent Will Chase (yes, that’s his name), stars Scott Foley opposite CIA Agent Francesca “Frankie” Trowbridge, played by Lauren Cohan. It’s more action and fun than drama–a good thing that works for this offbeat new series.

The first episode finds Agent Chase as a sad sack agent, recently dumped by his French girlfriend, crying as he listens to songs from his break-up mix tape, assembled from recommendations from other FBI agents. Those familiar with Michael Dorman’s lead character in Amazon Studio’s series Patriot will see much in common between the leads. Chase doesn’t have his heart in his job until he’s in action, and then he becomes full-on Jack Ryan (actor Scott Foley has a vibe crossing Jack Ryan series star John Krasinski and White Collar co-star Tim DeKay, and the pilot includes a humorous reference to his Chris Evans’ Captain America appearance).

As Chase tries to intercept an alleged hacker/thief/traitor, CIA Agent Trowbridge steps in, and that’s when the chemistry begins. You can almost hear the 1970s movie trailer voice-over: “What can happen when we combine this sensitive FBI agent and this tough-as-nails CIA spy? Can they work together to save the world without killing each other?” And yet, the pilot was edited into a fast-paced drama, not at all bogged down in origin story, and it supplies a supporting cast of characters that seem to gel from the start, played by Ana Ortiz, Vir Das, and Tyler James Williams. In brief, it’s fun and it works.

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Movie review–A stylish, classy, and fun retro fix, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

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August 17, 2015

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s almost a shame this weekend’s big screen release The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a retelling of the 1960s television series. It’s an adaptation in that it takes the framework of the show—an American and a Russian working together as Cold War era spies—yet director Guy Ritchie makes this work stand completely by itself. The fact that it’s based on a classic series may turn away viewers who may be tired of other remakes of 1960s shows like Get Smart and The Avengers (both of which were good standalone films). But that would be a great loss, as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is not only as stylish as advertised in our favorite trailer of the year, it’s a classy and smart story and a superb re-creation of the early 1960s.

It’s no surprise that this film relishes its Bond influences–Henry Cavill’s character Napoleon Solo was created by Ian Fleming, the same Ian Fleming that created Bond. Yet the movie is fresh and new. The story and Cavill’s performance evoke Matt Bomer’s role of stylish and cocky ex-art thief-turned government man on TV’s White Collar. In fact Cavill is a dead ringer for Bomer. Likely it’s just a coincidence but if you loved White Collar you’ll love this film. And any doubts you may have as to Cavill’s acting because of the poorly written part he was stuck with in Man of Steel will be wiped away with his confident and suave Solo. Even better is Armie Hammer’s performance as Illya Kuryakin. Any doubts you may have as to Hammer’s acting from his lead role in The Lone Ranger will also be wiped away. Hammer’s performance as a KGB agent in need of some anger management is nuanced and layered. The idea of putting some Ennio Morricone musical queues behind Hammer and adding a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry twitch are simply inspired. This is a great team and a film that sets itself up for an exciting sequel.

As commanding a presence as Cavill and Hammer have, they are almost upstaged by the equally important roles played by Alicia Vikander as the German daughter of a rocket scientist and Elizabeth Debicki as the ultimate Bond villain. The villainy in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is surprisingly as powerful, seething, and fun as any 1960s Bond film. All of this is a credit to Ritchie’s bankable directorial and writing prowess. A fan of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ritchie knows how to get the best out of partnerships here, just as he did with his Sherlock Holmes movie series.

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borg.com’s Best TV of 2014

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December 30, 2014

We love good TV. Nothing is better than looking forward each week to a show you can trust to have great writing and great acting. We’ve made our way through several series again this year, trying out pilots for new shows and adding them into the DVR queue–if they made the cut. Many didn’t. We also re-try series that didn’t prompt us to watch in prior years. Most lose out because they rely on shock over substance and storytelling. Where we ended up was a list of what we love, and what we have recommended all year. These series are our Best of the Best for 2014.

Our biggest disappointments? The cancellations of the brilliant, futuristic Almost Human and the reboot of the TV classic Dallas–these shows were written by the best script writers around and will be sorely missed. We hope you’ll give some of the following shows a try next year, or catch them on streaming media, if you’re not watching already.

Forever — Best TV Series, Best TV Fantasy Fix, Best Actor (Ioan Gruffudd), Best Actress (Alana de la Garza), Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch), Best Villain (Burn Gorman). Contenders for the year’s best series were easy to spot: ABC’s Forever or NBC’s Gotham. In years past at borg.com we have favored cable programming, yet this year the networks surged ahead with these two superb series. Forever nudged out Gotham for top prize because of its straightforward storytelling, small talented cast, superb dialogue, and fun situations. Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower, Ringer, Fantastic Four) and Alana de la Garza (Law and Order) were perfect foils for each other in the lead roles, and each created compelling characters. Judd Hirsch played son to younger Gruffudd’s unsinkable doctor and gave us the best father and son team on TV in years. Burn Gorman’s chilling performances toward the end of this season were a great addition, setting us up for more fun next year.

Gotham — Best TV Series Runner-up, Best Supporting Actress (Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney), Best Supporting Actor Runner-up (Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock). NBC’s Gotham did many things we normally wouldn’t like, including taking source material and standing it on end and adding new characters to a classic story’s established cast. Yet it all worked somehow with this intriguing re-imagining of Bruce Wayne’s backstory. Catwoman and Batman were friends as kids? The Penguin was a mole and stooge for key crime families? Commissioner Gordon took Bruce Wayne under his wing as a child? All of this worked, yet the best view into Gotham life was provided by Gordon’s partner, played by Donal Logue (Life, Vikings), and Jada Pinkett Smith’s sultry and ruthless gangster Fish Mooney.

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Almost Human delivers with believable vision of the future

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December 22, 2013

This year’s TV series Almost Human had the potential to be a big hit, with movie star Karl Urban as one of the two lead actors, and a classic sci-fi plot that looked like it would mix RoboCop, Alien Nation, Blade Runner, and Total Recall. After a fun but uncertain pilot episode, it has managed to deliver each week the kind of science fiction stories that are stuff of classic TV. Almost Human isn’t just sci-fi, it’s a full-blown police procedural drama, and a good old-fashioned buddy cop show to boot.

The series centers on megastar-film actor Karl Urban’s future cop, Detective John Kennex. Kennex is a grumpy guy with baggage, a past encounter gone bad resulted in the death of his partner and the need for a cybernetic leg. Early detractors of the series likened his Kennex too much to his similarly gruff Doctor McCoy from the new Star Trek movies. It’s a fair comparison. But we don’t care. They are both great characterizations and the miserable, tough guy routine is separable and fun to watch, especially Kennex’s banter with co-star Michael Ealy as almost human robot cop Dorian, an android of a decommissioned type who has become Kennex’s partner. In fact, the buddy cop routine will make you think of your favorite buddy cop shows, in the league of Alien Nation, Adam-12, Life on Mars, Hot Fuzz, Dragnet, Life, White Collar, and Starsky and Hutch.

This week’s episode was emblematic of why the series is destined to continue as long as the network will let it. The writers basically took the plot from a classic episode of Law and Order about pacemakers being refurbished and placed in new people. Here, that concept is blended with a current political item: what happens if there is no Affordable Care Act in the future, and a current element of technology some people use every day: the prepaid cell phone. So how did the writers put it all together?

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Tags: Adam-12, Alien Nation, Almost Human, Almost Human review, Blade Runner, buddy cop shows, Dragnet, Fox Network, Hot Fuzz, Karl Urban, Life, Life on Mars, Michael Ealy, Orphan Black, police procedural, Robocop, Starsky and Hutch, Total Recall, White Collar

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Uneven but promising start to USA’s new “Common Law”

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May 13, 2012

Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce

After months of vigorous publicity, USA Network’s latest buddy cop dramedy Common Law debuted Friday night, with mixed results. USA has long been teasing viewers with hints at the show’s premise: two quibbling homicide detectives attend couple’s counseling to work out their differences. Starring Michael Ealy (Barbershop, Underworld: Awakening) and Warren Cole (24) and featuring veteran character actor Jack McGee as their lieutenant and Sonya Walger (Lost, The Sarah Connor Chronicles) as the therapist, Common Law is an uneven mix of action, comedy, and police drama. With the USA pedigree behind it, it has a long way to go to catch up to network winners like White Collar and Burn Notice.

Let’s start with the premise. It’s good! It’s funny, it’s got a great hook, and the framework of the rocky relationship is something that can easily span multiple seasons of a series (unlike, say, Prison Break). We first meet our heroes in the middle of their first group therapy session, filling out personality questionnaires to prove how well the “partners” know each other. The jokes initially hinge on the double entendres, but do manage to rise above the obvious, delivering a few funny moments and revealing some depth to both leads. Therapist Walger is competent, although the pilot didn’t give her much opportunity to shine in the role; we’ll be watching to see if she becomes a memorable character in her own right like the late Stanley Kamel of Monk.

As a cop drama, the pilot was lackluster. Again, remember twenty years of Law & Order, seven seasons of The Closer, and the short but brilliant Life. This is a genre with savvy viewers who expect standout scripts and performances. The murder was forgettable (literally; it’s been less than twenty-four hours, and I’m having trouble remembering it), the writing just average, and the guest performances all lacked spark. They’ll need to raise the mystery and casting to the level of the premise for the show to keep my interest.

Strong performances by leads Travis (Ealy) and Wes (Kole) helped the pilot rise above its draggy plot and uninspired dialogue. Both were nicely developed, with complex backstories. Travis was raised in foster care, and Wes is a disillusioned former lawyer (although I would have liked to see those somewhat stereotypical histories reversed). Travis is a freewheeling ladies’ man, Wes an uptight perfectionist, and the two have landed themselves in hot water when Wes drew his gun on Travis over an argument. Enter Captain Sutton (McGee), who believes the same couple’s therapy that saved his marriage will do wonders for his best detectives. Ealy and Kole have great chemistry (or, at the moment, an entertaining lack thereof) and set the tone for the show. But McGee somehow feels out of step with the rest, adding an element of farce to an otherwise fairly dark humor. There was something off there that didn’t quite work for me.

However, some standout moments give this viewer hope for the series. A couple of really great action sequences featured clever twists on familiar police drama scenes (a convenience store holdup, the foot pursuit of a suspect). The foot pursuit, in particular, combined great filming/editing and some truly awe-inspiring synchronized stunt work by Wes and Travis. If Common Law features more of that in coming episodes, I will have a good reason to keep tuning in.

Tags: Burn Notice, Common Law, Common Law review, Jack McGee, Law and Order, Life, Michael Ealy, Sonya Walger, The Closer, USA Network, Warren Cole, White Collar

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Thousands attend Midwest’s annual “Planet Comicon” convention

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Movies, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment

March 27, 2012

By C.J. Bunce

One of the Midwest’s best pop culture and comic book conventions was this past weekend, Planet Comicon, which has been Kansas City’s largest fan convention for more than a dozen years. The show seemed to be bursting from its seams this year with thousands of guests, and appears to be outgrowing its venue at the Overland Park International Trade Center.

The film and TV headliners for this year’s show included Edward James Olmos, best known to sci-fi fans for his role in Blade Runner and as Adama in the Battlestar Galactica reboot series. He signed autographs and took photos with fans both days of the show. Here he is with Erin Gray, who appeared with other actors from the 1979-1981 TV series Buck Rogers and the 25th Century:

Gray also appeared on an episode of the Syfy Channel’s Hollywood Treasure last year.

The other featured major guest from film and TV was Billy Dee Williams, best known as Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but also as Harvey Dent alongside Michael Keaton in the 1989 Batman film. His current work includes a stint on USA’s White Collar.

Billy Dee also appeared at the show both days. (I offered a woman in line $5 to say “Billy Dee, Billy Dee, Billy Dee!” when she finally met him but didn’t take me up on it. And it’s OK if you don’t get that reference).

Early Saturday morning legendary comic book artist Michael Golden is getting fueled up before embarking on a sketch of Green Arrow:

Green Arrow by Michael Golden. How cool is that?

Michael is known for his work on such titles like Marvel Comics series The ‘Nam, GI Joe Yearbook, Star Wars, and Micronauts. He is also the co-creator of the X-Men character Rogue.

I’ve been a fan of the different styles Mike Norton uses in his art for quite a while. Here he is signing one of his comic pages for the Green Arrow/Black Canary series, where he did the pencil work and comic book legend Bill Sienkiewicz provided the ink work:

Mike is working on a creator-owned project currently and has previously worked on Runaways, Gravity, the Young Justice animated series comic book. He was actively sketching pages for fans at the show and produced probably a dozen at least over the weekend, including this great image for me:

Unfortunately Bernie Wrightson wasn’t sketching at this year’s convention, but he was signing plenty of shirts and books for his Frankenstein book. Wrightson’s horror artwork goes back several decades, with his first published comic work with House of Mystery in 1969. He co-created Swamp Thing in 1971. His work has appeared in Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, and Batman: The Cult. Here Wrightson is at a signing table with Freddie Williams II and his wife Kiki:

Freddie is well known for his work on his Robin series, and is currently one of the DC Comics top artists. We reviewed his and JT Krul’s Captain Atom series here at borg.com a few weeks ago. Freddie was busy creating sketches for fans and speaking on panels at the show.

Currently working on projects for Dynamite Comics, Bionic Man writer Phil Hester and Lone Ranger writer Ande Parks had pages of original artwork as well as copies of their books new and old that they were signing for fans, including a lot of low-priced original art from their run on the DC Comics Green Arrow series:

It’s great that these guys have tackled both the writing and illustration sides of comic book creation.

I got to catch up again with a couple well known Kansas City authors. Here, Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, two of the best known authors of Star Trek novels, talk with fans at the show.

The NBC TV series Heroes co-creator Tim Sale was signing books and art at his booth:

Sales’ past work includes art in Batman: Dark Victory, Batman: The Long Halloween, Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Grey, Spider-Man: Blue and Superman For All Seasons. (What’s with these color titles, anyway?). His unique stylized paintings on Heroes featured into the plot of the series.

I spent time chatting with Rob B. Davis, currently providing illustrations for a Sherlock Holmes series and past artist for Malibu’s Deep Space Nine comic book series, writer Jai Nitz, who was juggling signing copies of his Kato and Tron: Betrayal series while moderating different comic book panels at the show, borg.com writer Art Schmidt, local writer Justin Cline manning the front of the convention, and Todd Aaron Smith, who sketched this great Black Canary image for me:

Smith had provided storyboards for Family Guy and other animation art for shows like South Park and various DC Comics and Marvel Comics TV series. Current Marvel Comics lead writer Jason Aaron could be found with some good lines of fans waiting to get copies of his various Hulk, Wolverine and X-men series signed:

The facility was packed wall to wall with plenty of booths selling everything from graphic novels to collectible action figures, original comic book art, and comic book back issues. Here, Elite Comics comic book store owner William Binderup appears to be raking in some cash from sales of comics at his booth:

Show producer Chris Jackson seemed pleased with the success of this year’s convention.

And of course there were plenty of cosplayers. Here a few Batman characters huddled for a photo:

But I think the best was this “Hello Kitty meets Stormtrooper” mash-up:

No doubt it would have been a far different Star Wars had Luke showed up to rescue the princess with this outfit.

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Dresden or Malfoy as Bond? Why not?

Filed under: Con Culture, Movies, TV — 6 Comments

November 6, 2011

Finishing up our speculation of a future James Bond that began here yesterday, we’ve got two actors who would be good picks, and who are probably not obvious choices for the super-spy shortlist. These picks are for an older vs a younger Bond, figuring an actor who can look 40-45 is probably in the ideal range. Then again, Roger Moore played Bond at age 46 and 58, so there really doesn’t need to be any age limit on choosing a good actor to play Bond. First up, Paul Blackthorne, followed by Jason Isaacs.

Paul Blackthorne may be best known for his portrayal of wizard Harry Dresden in the short-lived but excellent TV adaptation of Jim Butcher’s novels, The Dresden Files. Blackthorne has had his share of “guest star of the week” appearances on TV shows such as Medium, Monk, Burn Notice, Leverage, Warehouse 13, and White Collar. If there is any reason he might not get selected in the future as James Bond it is because he is primarily had TV roles, but he is only 42, with plenty of time to get some movies behind him. And besides, Pierce Brosnan didn’t do much that was notable before GoldenEye other than Remington Steele.

Blackthorne is a British actor that has honed his American accent so well that you would never know his British background. If the Broccoli family continues with actors like Daniel Craig down the line as Bond, Blackthorne would fit right in. And if they want him to play up the Brit-speak he could easily play a Bond of the Sean Connery or Timothy Dalton variety. In fact, Blackthorne looks like a young Connery. All that aside, as Harry Dresden we got to see Blackthorne as a versatile actor, the role itself a bit X-Files, a bit cop drama, a bit Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s fun to watch and a likeable actor. And he looks the part.

Forty-eight year old British actor Jason Isaacs may be most famous for his portrayal as the sniveling, white-haired wizard Lucius Malfoy (Draco’s dad) in the Harry Potter movies. But in this year’s BBC/public television Masterpiece Mystery series Case Histories, we get to see Isaacs in a more down to Earth role, as a soldier turned cop turned private investigator. More than anything else, Isaacs comes across as a very cool character, the kind of cool required of Bond, with a fair amount of self-effacing scenes that show his capacity for some good humor, something we haven’t seen so much of in recent Bond portrayals. Maybe it is time to see how an older Roger Moore type Bond would appeal to fans?

Isaacs also has had a fair number of big screen roles, besides the Harry Potter films, including DragonHeart, Event Horizon, Armageddon, Soldier, Black Hawk Down, Resident Evil, and a lot of voice-over work–he’d have the sound of Bond down pretty well, too. And like Rufus Sewell and Paul Blackthorne, he sort of has that British renegade agent look about him. And he’s a dead ringer for Timothy Dalton.

So that’s just three recommendations. Any others?

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

Tags: Burn Notice, Case Histories, Daniel Craig, Dresden Files, Harry Potter, James Bond, Jason Isaacs, Leverage, Medium, Monk, Paul Blackthorne, Pierce Brosnan, Warehouse 13, White Collar

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Best TV series: White Collar hits full stride, winds up summer season

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August 10, 2011

White Collar wrapped its best run yet last night with a exciting cat and mouse story guest starring Beau Bridges as Agent Peter Burke’s mentor from the DC FBI office, in town to help Burke prove a missing treasure of lost art and artifacts was stolen by his friend and confidential informant, Neil Caffrey. The treasure served as the back story for each of the episodes in this summer run, the first part of the third season of this USA network series. But it is the relationship between the characters, and more than that the clear chemistry between Tim Dekay (Peter) and Matt Bomer (Neil Caffrey), DeKay and Tiffani Thiessen (Neil’s wife Ellie), Thiessen and Willie Garson (Mozzie), Bomer and Hilarie Burton (Caffrey’s girlfriend Sara), and Thiessen, Garson, Bomer and Dekay together that made a good first two seasons finally catapult this year into a sharp, witty, and intriguing spy and cop show. For finally hitting its stride and achieving the potential we knew this show had in it, White Collar has become the best TV series this year.

Highlights of the season include the episode “Dentist of Detroit,” where a feared crime boss from Mozzie’s Detroit past is rumored to have surfaced in Manhattan, and we learn the details of Mozzie’s secret past. What kind of name is Dentist of Detroit for a mob boss? What’s scarier than a dentist? Mozzie’s past is traced from his youth to today, and we get to see how this strange, little paranoid fellow became the savvy thief and con man we know and love.

In the penultimate episode of the season, “On the Fence,” Matt Bomer paired up with his former co-star of Tru Calling, Eliza Dushku, in her first solidly mature, adult television role, where she proved to stand on equal ground with every other actor on the show. She played a stylish and “spicy” Egyptologist, who may or may not be a part of a shady underworld of trade in illegal artifacts. A stolen amulet, the possible end to Neil’s best relationship to date, Neil wrestling with holding back from Mozzie the fact he has a copy of the manifest, the return of Peter’s kidnapper (Keller) from earlier in the series, and Mozzie’s steely tough decision to put a $6 million bounty on Keller’s head to protect Caffrey, all adds up to great TV watching.

In the second episode of the season, “Where There’s a Will,” Peter and Neil followed a treasure map to uncover the kidnapper of a little girl. The team sleuths out a dead man who forged signatures on his own wills, Mozzie introduces the idea to sell the Degas out of the warehouse treasure, Mozzie brings in Peter’s dog Satchmo to an art gallery to create a diversion, the show introduces Anna Chlumsky as an art crimes expert coming to look at the partial treasure manifest who succombs to Caffrey’s charms, and clue after clue to determine who the kidnapper is makes this a standout episode for the series.

But the most enjoyable episode so far goes to the seventh episode of the season, “Taking Account,” where a computer hacker empties the entirety of a bank’s customer accounts, causing Caffrey and Sara to track down the hacker and steal the money back. Sara and Neil then go on a crazy extravagant spending spree, and we get to go along for the ride. Sara and Neil get to live it up, albeit briefly, as they predictably get found out by Peter. A rousing and funny episode with all the characters and actors in top form. The relationship between Neil and Sara seems to have definitively replaced the less interesting relationship between Neil and Kate, and hopefully we will see Neil and Sara rekindle their partnership in future episodes.

While its first two seasons were fresh and new, more episodes than not were just not memorable and the characters and story were struggling to find their footings. But this year the producers, writers and cast finally amped up their game. With any luck White Collar will hopefully continue its newly found momentum when it continues the 2011 season this winter.

C.J. Bunce

Editor

borg.com

Tags: Anna Chlumsky, Beau Bridges, best TV series, Eliza Dushku, Matt Bomer, Tiffani Thiessen, Tim Dekay, USA Network, White Collar, Willie Garson

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On video: Ten TV series that didn’t make it (but should have), Part 1

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — 4 Comments

August 5, 2011

By Elizabeth C. Bunce

Our DVR broke this week. I won’t go into the trauma of missing the last installment of Zen on Masterpiece Mystery, or of losing the final three (still unwatched) episodes of the now cancelled Men of a Certain Age. The upside of this technological crisis, however, was that it spurred us to unearth old TV favorites on streaming video from Netflix and break out some DVDs. There’s always something kind of bittersweet about that, though, especially running across old friends that were cancelled well before their prime, and in some cases even before they quite hit their stride. And so, in memoriam, tonight borg.com will spotlight a few of our genre favorites that were cancelled too soon.

Life (2007-2009/NBC/21 episodes)
NBC’s short-lived quirky police procedural about a mild-mannered homicide detective wrongfully convicted of murdering his partner’s entire family starred English actor Damian Lewis (Assassin in Love, Showtime’s new series Homeland) and Sarah Shahi (USA’s Fairly Legal). Its offbeat mix of gruesome murders and weird-but-lovable cast members was probably a little too offbeat for most viewers, but we loved Lewis’s Zen-meditating Charlie Crews and his efforts to fit back into his life and job after eleven years in prison and an undisclosed multimillion dollar settlement with the LAPD. An intriguing series-long mystery plot (who really killed Crews’s partner?) might have made it more difficult for new viewers to join mid-season (although we had no trouble getting hooked after just one episode), but was thoughtfully resolved in the series finale. Standout performances by Donal Logue and Adam Arkin only compound our sense of loss for this series.

The Riches (2007-2008/FX/19 episodes)
Before the days of Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy, FX broke every rule of tasteless TV in this outrageous series about a family of Travellers trying to make it as “buffers” in an upscale suburban neighborhood, after assuming the identities of a family killed in a car accident. Starring standup comic Eddie Izzard as title character “Doug Rich,” and Minnie Driver (Phantom of the Opera), The Riches featured scams, drug abuse, murders, robbery, and a host of other illicit goings-on–and that’s just by the heroes! Alternately appalling and hilarious, ultimately The Riches just couldn’t hold on to its early impressive ratings, and was cancelled after only 19 episodes, leaving loyal viewers without even a semblance of closure to the Riches’ compelling storyline.

Tru Calling (2003-2005/Fox/26 episodes)
Eliza Dushku’s first starring vehicle of her post-Buffy days, Tru Calling had an excellent sci-fi premise, sort of Medium meets Groundhog Day. Medical student Tru (Dushku) gets a part-time job in the morgue and discovers that the recently deceased can ask for her help, causing her to relive their final days, in the hopes of saving their lives or solving their murders. Co-starring The Hangover‘s Zach Galafianakis in a wonderful role as Tru’s morgue mentor, and White Collar’s and Chuck’s Matt Bomer as Tru’s love interest, Tru Calling was gearing up for great things, the mysteries surrounding Tru’s power only building, just as the series was unceremoniously axed by Fox.

Eleventh Hour (2008-2009/CBS/18 episodes)
This American adaptation of the even-shorter-lived BBC medical thriller (with Patrick Stewart) starred accomplished English actor Rufus Sewell (Zen, Knight’s Tale, Pillars of the Earth) as Dr. Jacob Hood, FBI consultant solving baffling scientific crimes. Not an outstanding series by any standards, Eleventh Hour was nevertheless competent and entertaining, and one had the feeling that the performers were better than the material they had to work with. I firmly believe the show could have gotten even better, but it was trapped in a dead-end timeslot (Thursdays at 10 pm) and ultimately failed to interest the CSI viewership the network hoped would bolster ratings.

The Dresden Files (2007/SyFy/12 episodes)
I’m still stinging from the cancellation of this great adaptation of Jim Butcher’s bestselling urban fantasy series. Starring the always-solid Paul Blackthorne (guest appearances in Burn Notice, Monk, Leverage, Warehouse 13, and others), the show featured excellent writing, engaging paranormal storylines, and an absolutely winning cast, but wasn’t given the same network or fan support of later SyFy hits like Warehouse 13 or Eureka. Fortunately, all twelve episodes are currently available via streaming video on Netflix.

Tomorrow, C.J. Bunce will continue the list with the rest of our list of TV series that ended too soon.