HOLISTIC DETECTIVE Whole Lot of Chaotic Fun

Article first published as DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY Review on Seat42F.

BBC America has a new series coming this weekend entitled DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY. No, this isn’t the first show to be adapted from the Douglas Adams books, but it certainly is an interesting one.

If you haven’t read the Dirk Gently books, one that shares a title with this show, a second called The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and a third that was only partially finished before the author’s passing, but was posthumously published anyway, called The Salmon of Doubt, you may be asking yourself what exactly is a holistic detective? Or, after seeing the names of the other books in the series, you may have already chalked up the author as a weirdo whose titles aren’t expected to strictly make sense. Both are probably correct attitudes to have.

According to Dirk (played here by Penny Dreadful’s Samuel Barnett), a holistic detective is one who looks at the whole picture. He follows any tangent that occurs to him, and it somehow all works out. The universe provides, so to speak. And for some reason, he can be hired to solve a murder by the guy who is killed. (Don’t ask.)

Thankfully (for obvious reasons), Dirk is not our protagonist. That honor belongs to Todd (Elijah Wood, Wilfred, The Lord of the Rings), a simple hotel worker who gets pulled into Dirk’s craziness quite unintentionally. Todd is our everyman who doesn’t understand why very, very strange things start happening around him, and doesn’t want anything to do with a man who just moves into one’s Seattle apartment without asking. So he’s our grounded anchor in a very bizarre show.

Although I have not read this book series, it does not appear that the new show is based on the novels, plot-wise. Todd isn’t mentioned in any novel description. Instead, it just takes the inane character of Dirk and drops him into our real world, with all new wackiness. Considering how The Hitchhiker’s Galaxy movie was received, perhaps that’s for the best, though I would likely be annoyed if I were someone who had read the books.

The show itself does a lot of the trademark Adams wit (I did read and enjoyed all of Hitchhiker’s, so I feel I can say that), with a bunch of mumbo jumbo dialogue that sounds good, but doesn’t really hold up under scrutiny, in a good way. Some of the laughs are obtained by pointing out absurdity in the real world in the context of the insane Dirk, and some are just derived from weird situations.

It also resembles humorist Dave Barry’s wonderful debut novel, Big Trouble, in that it features a great many characters, each with their own motivations, who somehow all come into one another’s orbit. In the pilot, we meet Todd’s sister, Amanda (Hannah Marks, Necessary Roughness), who is struggling with an odd affliction. We also meet a holistic assassin, Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif, True Blood), and Todd’s neighbor, Farah Black (Jade Eshete, Shades of Blue), and a scared nerd, Ken (Mpho Koaho, Falling Skies), and a weird man, Gordon (Aaron Douglas, Battlestar Galactica), and Zimmerfield (Richard Schiff, The West Wing), and Riggins (Miguel Sandoval, Medium), and Friedkin (Dustin Milligan, Schitt’s Creek), and Estevez (Neil Brown Jr., Straight Out of Compton), and The Rowdy 3, who are actually four men, which I won’t list because this is getting ridiculously long.

All of the above are zany main characters, and their individual threads are all already coming into conflict already in episode one. It’s an extremely convoluted plot that is surprisingly easy to follow, and constantly entertaining. There was not a moment of this pilot that I didn’t love, and while I have absolutely no idea where this is going, or really, even who Dirk is, I am eager to follow along.

If you like offbeat British humor in general, or Douglas Adams in particular, I recommend checking out DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISITC DETECTIVE AGENCY, premiering Saturday at 9/8 c on BBC America.

The Kept Or THE RETURNED

Article originally written for Seat42F.

A&E’s new series THE RETURNED is based on the French series Les Revenants, which re-aired on Sundance and Netflix with subtitles under the name The Returned. I haven’t seen the original yet, though I keep meaning to watch, so when viewing this pilot, I was instead comparing it to last year’s Resurrection on ABC, which in turn was based on an unrelated book called The Return. Is that confusing enough for you?

All of these stories may be similar, but if you haven’t seen any of them, the premise of THE RETURNED is this: A girl named Camille (India Ennenga, Treme) dies when her bus runs off a cliff. Four years later, she returns home to her parents, Claire (Tandi Wright, Nothing Trivial) and Jack (Mark Pellegrino, Lost, The Tomorrow People), and twin sister, Lena (Sophie Lowe, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland), unaged and with no memory of the past four years. She’s not a zombie or a ghost; the first things she does are to fix herself a sandwich and take a bath. But she has no memory of the crash nor explanation as to where she’s been, nor any sign on injury, healed or otherwise.

Then, other dead people start showing up around town, too, not her classmates from the bus, but others that have passed in various years past. A man finds his fiancé getting remarried after a long mourning period. A wife who appears to have died decades ago goes home to her now-elderly husband. And there’s a little kid that no one seems to know, but may just hold the key to the mystery.

I have seen reviews for THE RETURNED that say this new series is to Les Revenants as Gracepoint is to Broadchurch. If you don’t get that reference, Gracepoint is a decent FOX series that aired this fall that is extremely similar to a superior show called Broadchurch, which was made in England. Without that knowledge of the source material, I like THE RETURNED, but those who have viewed the original may think this is a pale imitation. I cannot comment on that.

I can say THE RETURNED is about ten notches better than Resurrection. The story is far more cohesive, and the characters are compelling. There is a definite, big unanswered question in the pilot that I doubt the show will solve soon, but while I want to find out the answer, I’m also happy to enjoy the ride getting there.

The cast is phenomenal. Besides those mentioned above, the ensemble includes Jeremy Sisto (Suburgatory), Michelle Forbes (The Killing), Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), Sandrine Holt (House of Cards), Kevin Alejandro (True Blood), Leah Gibson (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), Agnes Bruckner (Private Practice), Dylan Kingwell (Big Eyes), Mat Vairo (Revolution), and Rhys Ward (Heartland). Not all of these people are well known, but most are, and have been in some of the best shows on television in the past decade. There aren’t any huge movie stars present to distract from the others, but these are some strong small screen performers.

The cast is super important to THE RETURNED because the program will hang on the characters. With the mystery of the show being so strange and obtuse, there aren’t likely to be any major clues anytime soon. Instead, the drama will live in the interaction of the players, and how the various people deal with coming home having lost years or welcoming back someone they believed gone forever. Not everyone handles it the same way, one person tragically unprepared, but this what viewers are going to want to see.

THE RETURNED is also a little creepy. The living dead do not appear to be monsters or killers, but who has brought them back and why? One of the main characters (not one of the returned) is exposed as having done something really horrible to another. Human nature can be dark, and pairing THE RETURNED with Bates Motel likely signals that this more negative side of personality will be explored, at least in conjunction with the positive.

I don’t know what THE RETURNED has in store, and I’m likely to still watch Les Revenants in the meantime, which could change my opinion. But for now, I’m very interested to see where the series is going.

THE RETURNED airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on A&E.

Hemlock Grove is a Familiar Place

Article first published as HEMLOCK GROVE Review on Seat42F.

Grade: 83%

Netflix’s latest drama is called HEMLOCK GROVE. Based on the novel of the same name, HEMLOCK GROVE begins with kinky sex and the murder of a teenager, which are unrelated, I think, but make for a one-two punch with some serious drawing power. It’s important, in a television field crowded with horror and murder mystery entries, that the opening grab viewers. But many a series has had a great hook, then failed to deliver.

HEMLOCK GROVE, not even released yet, has already been beset upon by bad press. Many note that it fails to live up to Netflix’s last original series, House of Cards. Although, just about every series ever created would fail to live up to House of Cards, a brilliant drama, so by comparison, yes, HEMLOCK GROVE is not nearly as good.

Which doesn’t make it bad, necessarily.

HEMLOCK GROVE feels pretty familiar. It’s about a bunch of brooding teens and their equally mysterious parents living in a gloomy town. There are hints in the first episode of both a vampire and a werewolf, and one girl looks like something straight out of FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum. In fact, HEMLOCK GROVE seems to take inspiration from Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, and The Killing, to name a few.

What it lacks in originality, it does attempt to make up for in pay-cable level content. You will see a topless girl in the first few minutes. The body of Brooke Bluebell (Lorenza Izzo), the character killed early in the pilot’s run, is pretty gory. There is a homosexual predator introduced who goes after girls far too young for her. These are things that HEMLOCK GROVE, being on Netflix, can use to set itself apart from the tamer fare.

I also think Netflix’s model of releasing all thirteen episodes of the first season at once will serve it well. This is the type of show that begs marathon viewing. Want to know who killed Brooke? Just keep watching. You don’t have to wait twelve weeks, with the puzzle slowly doled out forty minutes at a time. That immediacy should help retain viewers who are on fence after the first installment or two.

That being said, I don’t know that HEMLOCK GROVE has real staying power. I only have access to the beginning of the season, not the entire thing, so I can’t say for certain the impact of the complete picture. But, only a few hours after viewing the first episode, I am having trouble remembering very many of the characters’ names, and I’m not entirely sold on the premise, which isn’t completely apparent. The effects are good, and I remember moments, just not people. The cast is capable, but their roles aren’t well defined as unique personalities at this point, certainly no one really standing out right away. I will probably watch more. But I’m not super excited to get back to it, a I was with House of Cards.

At the start of the first episode, “Jellyfish in the Sky,” a Gypsy boy named Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron, Terra Nova, Degrassi: The Next Generation) comes to town with his mother, Lynda (Lili Taylor, Six Feet Under). Because they are new to the area, obviously they quickly become suspects in Brooke’s murder case. But they seem gentle enough. Also, they move into a deceased’s relative’s place, so they may have some connection to the locale.

The other major family introduced in “Jellyfish in the Sky” consists of Roman Godfrey (Bill Skarsgard), his mother, Olivia (Famke Janssen, X-Men), and his sister, Shelley. They are rich and not very nice, and we soon see that there is likely more to them than meets the eye. Olivia is accused of being some type of monster, and Shelley visually is one, providing the only really cheesy bit in the pilot, as Shelley shuffles around with her grotesque face covered up, presumably to save on effects, though I have trouble complaining about not seeing her face too often.

While the Godfreys appear evil and the Rumanceks seem good, it’s clear that it won’t be as simple as that. We do get more backstory on the Godfreys in the first episode, so of course we get to see the darker aspects of their clan, including what happened to Mr. Godfrey, and how they interact with remembers of their extended family. But we don’t know much about the Rumanceks, and they may have a gritty side, too, as we see that they aren’t above stealing.

Either way, these are the main characters, or the two boys are, at least, so it’s unlikely that one of them is the killer. Instead, we’ll eventually find out who they are and what their motivations might be. A description of the series says they end up working together to find the killer, which seems an odd pairing, but I’m sure that will explained as things unfold, and it could be interesting.

The guys are surrounded by many other strange characters, each of whom could possibly be the murderer, based on the little bits we see of them. There’s the weird girl next door, Christina (Freya Tingley), who fancies herself an investigator. Norman Godfrey (Dougray Scott, Desperate Housewives) is Roman’s uncle, who has had, or is having, an affair with Roman’s mom. The town sheriff is Tom Sworn (Aaron Douglas, Battlestar Galactica), whom we know nothing about. And surely there will be others in the coming episodes.

I feel like HEMLOCK GROVE distracts us with a large number of characters so that they have room to keep us guessing, which is a good thing, sort of. If only there were any clue that might help us begin that process in “Jellyfish in the Sky.” Or a character to connect to and get behind. As such, it should appeal fine to those who dig the other scary stuff on TV, but I doubt it will have a broad appeal or defy convention.

HEMLOCK GROVE’s thirteen episode first season will be available this Friday on Netflix.

Hellcats Fall 2010 Overview

     The CW's Hellcats is not just Bring It On: The Series. Nor is it another 90210. It's a teen (or just past teen) drama, sure, with all the usual affairs and scandalous twists. But it's also an inspiring sports series, as those cheerleaders are very much athletes, and there's some legal mystery tossed in for flavor. Plus, a few unnecessary, but fun, dance numbers a la Glee. I guess that's what makes it worth watching. There are plenty of elements to keep things interesting.

     After eleven episodes, I'm still not particularly impressed with the cast. They're decent, but not above average. I am most enjoying Matt Barr as Dan Patch. Dan is certainly the most likable, and the most in touch with who he is of the central characters. He also carries the Memphis accent pretty much by himself; even the other characters who are from the area seem to have shed it. Perhaps it's because he's a townie, while the rest are integrated with the college students, who arrive from all over. Lead Alyson Michalka is also one of the better ones, as many of her emotional scenes are played on her face, rather than dialogue. Her disconnect from others is part of the character trait, so her tendency to underact at times seems like a choice rather than a failure.

     I do have to give credit to Heather Hemmens's Alice. While she was established as the villain from day one, her motivations have been made clear, and even made viewers sympathetic to her bitterness. As the episodes this fall unfolded, it was clear that Alice did have lines she would not cross, even if she went further than most characters would. She's not completely disloyal to those around her, even if she often puts herself first. It's the subtleties that make her character successful, and Hemmens does accomplish those with grace.

     One quick criticism. Marti joined the Hellcats as a replacement for the injured Alice. Alice healed from injuries several episodes before the fall finale, and yet, how they both fit on the team now has never been dealt with. There are only a certain number of flyers the Hellcats can accommodate at once. It appears to me that Marti kept the flyer position, and Alice just dances now. But is that how it is? It would have been nice to have dealt with that on screen.

     As mentioned before, there is some legal plot going on, with Marti investigating an old case for an inmate named Travis (Ben Cotton), whom she has come around to believing innocent. I will certainly not knock the series for trying something different, and adding such an odd element to their show. Odd, considering that most of the scenes deal with college cheerleaders. However, it almost feels like it should be its own spin-off. It's like there are two different series going on at once. Should Hellcats continue for a few years, I could totally see Marti and Morgan Pepper (Craig Anderson) doing their own law-based series, leaving the other characters to the cheering. It could be quite enjoyable.

     I guess that subplot, though, demonstrates a level of realism that imbibes Hellcats. Life is complicated, and people are involved with several different things at once. Keeping the principal cast small (only six), and using supporting characters as support, rather than giving them their own plots (for the most part), has allowed Hellcats to do what other shows cannot, as they are too involved trying to serve everyone, and don't allow any one character too much depth.

     Yes, I did say in the preceding paragraph that there are six main characters, even though seven names appear in the opening credits. Wanda (Gail O'Grady) might as well be supporting, as she really only pops up in Marti's arcs. I know O'Grady is a talented actress from her previous work, and could handle a larger piece of the Hellcats world. But I really like Wanda in her current space, and there is something to be said for someone who can play that type of character and do it so engrossingly. As such, I would not lobby for a change in Wanda's part, other than perhaps a few more one-liners every now and then.

     A large part of this fall has concerned getting the Hellcats to qualify for the national championships. Yet, the cheerleading saga has not choked out the other story. It's something that has hung over everyone, but not consumed them except when it needed to. It justifies the title of the series, but does not define it. I like that.

     I love, love, love the Bill Marsh (Aaron Douglas, Battlestar Galactica) character. Having grown up in a town and a high school where football players were often above the rules that applied to everyone else, it's thrilling to see such a corrupt athletic department, with emphasis on the football program. It's so bad that one of the athletes, Lewis (Robbie Jones), actually quit the team in protest. Sure, other shows have toyed with the idea, but I can't remember one that delivered so evil a character as Bill. I personally believe football players and the game are often too glorified, and like seeing them taken down a peg. Well, at least in viewers of the show's opinions of them, as no one can watch Hellcats and like what's happening under Bill's leadership.

     That being said, there are plenty of great coaches in the real world like Red Raymond (Jeff Hephner). Introduced as a thorn in Vanessa's (Sharon Leal) side, he, like Alice, has grown into something more complicated. He's a truly moral coach, trying to keep the crap away from his players and his team. The one time he did cross that moral line was to help out Vanessa, and so his action can be excused. Red has power, but not enough to change the system. More coaches (and athletic directors) like Red could change the sport, and keep experiences like the one in the show from happening too often.

     On top of all of that other stuff, the series still takes time to work on religion. Savannah (Ashley Tisdale, High School Musical) was home schooled, and originally attended a very religious college. She transferred to Lancer, but her younger sister, Charlotte (Emma Lahana) remains at home, in the religious school, and in the church. Charlotte is pregnant, go figure, while Savannah remains a virgin. It's a commentary on the stifling affects that can be had being raised in uber-religious families. But Savannah is a positive role model for the faithful, and shows that a balance between the holy and the secular produces great individuals. The series doesn't demonize religion, but provides several different viewpoints into how faith affects people, and the children they raise.

     Overall, it's a pretty good show. I can't point to many weak points that need fixing, and they've covered a lot in eleven episodes. As I said, all of the actors are at least decent, and will surely grow better with time. The story arcs are excellent, and the different elements coming to the table are pretty well mixed. While not life-altering, it earns a season pass on my TiVo, and is worth watching.

     Hellcats is currently taking a winter break, but will return January 25th to the CW.

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Article first published as TV Review: Hellcats - Fall 2010 Overview on Blogcritics.