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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 20 |
 "Harper's Island" is on Thursday nights from 10-11 on CBS. Check your local TV guide for the stations in your area. |
Drowsing my way through
CBS' new mystery serial
of TheColumnists.com
As of this writing, CBS has presented two chapters of its new mystery serial called "Harper's Island." I fell asleep during the opening segment and had to see it over again via Comcast cable's "on demand," which allows viewers to catch-up on some shows by summoning them to their TV screen when it's more convenient.
Then I fell asleep in the second chapter, summoned it up the following night via "on demand" and fell asleep all over again.
Now there are several conclusions one could reach. The first is that I get up too early (5 a.m.) to be watching any programs that start at 10 p.m. I'm growing old and staying up late is not one of my current strong points.
Another conclusion might be that "Harper's Island" doesn't engage me the way some other TV shows do, like, for instance, "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "Dexter" or "Battlestar Galactica." I think you'd be safe reaching either of these two conclusions.
"Harper's Island" is a great concept--a limited-tenure mystery TV series that runs for only a couple of months and ends with the mystery being solved. That's a fine way to present a mystery series that uses a serial format, leaving you in a cliffhanger situation at the end of each episode.
The basic premise isn't even too bad: A bunch of people take the ferry to this remote island in Puget Sound off the Washington coast. They're going to attend a wedding. The island has kind of a bad rap because a serial killer knocked off half a dozen people there not too long ago and left their corpses hanging in trees like rotting fruit. Now a serial killer seems to be at it again, knocking off a couple of wedding guests per week.
But here are the problems I'm having with staying interested in "Harper's Island": First, I don't think I've ever seen any of these actors before and there are so many unfamiliar faces that I can't tell them apart. Except for the obvious creepazoid-types, that means I'm not sure if I care if any of them gets murdered. I really don't know enough about these people to care very much about them.
Well, I take that back. I do know who Harry Hamlin is. He's that guy from "L.A. Law" who once appeared in one of those ancient Greece movies called "Clash of the Titans." So what happens to Harry Hamlin? He gets whacked in the first episode!
The whacking also is kind of gross. There's the guy who was chained to the bottom of a boat, hooked up to an air supply so he wouldn't drown, but so close to the ship's propellor that his head was lopped off as soon as the boat revved its engines. Harry fell through a bridge of some kind and something whacked him from below. I don't even want to think about what parts of him might have been whacked off. Another guy was out in the woods and I believe his head was whacked off.
While I was watching the first episode for the second time, I thought to myself: "This is just like a daytimne soap opera that has made a deal with that Jason-guy from the "Friday the 13th" movies to come in and whack people to keep the suspense growing. There are always people coming up behind other people--or jumping at them from just off to the side. That's traditional horror movie stuff, right?
A woman I know told me she also was disappointed with "Harper's Island" because she felt like she was watching a horror movie that suddenly turned into "Days of Our Lives." I think she was having the same problem I was having. They should change the name of the show to "Days of Our Deaths" and get it over with.
Naturally, I want shows like "Harper's Island" to do well because I'm a mystery guy and maybe that will inspire networks to do more mystery shows. But if "Harper's Island" does well, maybe it will inspire networks to do more shows like "Harper's Island." That, dear friends, would be a very revolting development indeed.
©2009 by Ron Miller. The illustrations are courtesy of CBS. This column first posted April 20, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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