Can Something Be Underlooked?

Whether lockdowns were an appropriate response to covid-19 (as opposed to, say, the more moderate Swedish response in which businesses and schools have stayed open, partly due to a different calculation of the risk and partly due to a conviction that economic costs are human costs, too) will be debated for years – more likely decades. As long as there is political capital to be made by taking one position rather than another, it is unlikely any answer will be entirely credible. Whatever the case may be (I don’t pretend to have the answer), yet another weekend at home has passed (mostly), and there was time to sample two more “overlooked” scifi television shows. Both struggled with ratings when first aired (which I suppose is what “overlooked” means). Each was just barely approved for a second season, but neither got a third. I watched only season 1 of each.

Jericho did not get particularly good reviews when its first few episodes were released to critics prior to airing in 2006, but it soon won a smallish but loyal fan base anyway. Critics warmed to it also as the show went on. It was canceled at the end of season 1, but (in an echo of Star Trek decades ago) an intense campaign by dedicated fans convinced CBS to reverse itself and agree to a second season. Ratings didn’t improve, however, and it was canceled for good after just seven more episodes.

The location is Jericho Kansas, a small town near the Colorado border. In the opening minutes of the first episode we meet several key characters. Then a mushroom cloud rises in the distance. Multiple major US cities have been nuked. Denver was one of the cities hit. Jericho is unscathed, but of course supply chains for everything from gasoline to groceries are disrupted, so the situation is still dire. Apparently the explosions were not due to a general exchange with an enemy nation. The most brutal wars are civil wars as Thucydides lucidly described so many years ago, and there are indications these attacks were homegrown.

The show is focused on personal interactions in the small town with the broader national disaster just as a backdrop. We see store owners wondering how to stay in business, kids whose parents were in targeted cities at the time of the attacks, bad romances that are still bad romances, and a mayor who despite the emergency still faces unhelpfully hostile political opposition. There also may be conspirators in town who had prior knowledge of the attack and who knew Jericho was a relatively safe haven. The show is an ensemble drama, but if there is a central character it is Jake (Skeet Ulrich), a ne’er-do-well long-absent son of the mayor who just happened to be in town for a visit when the event happened. Some people rise to the occasion, some people sink to it, while others stumble around in confusion. The show prompts a viewer to wonder how he or she would act in the circumstances.

Upshot: As post-apocalyptic dramas go, it is not bad, but had I watched it in 2006 I wouldn’t have been one of the voices clamoring for its renewal. Thumbs Up, but not way up.

Next up was Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (2016) which shares a title but surprisingly little else with the Douglas Adams book. The raging worldwide success of Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was never matched by his Dirk Gently novels, but anyone who likes the Hitchhiker books should like Dirk despite the absence of two-headed galactic presidents and That Old Janx Spirit. Adams himself described the first book as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics." The two Dirk books are clever, witty, and absurd in Adams fashion. They also have a quintessentially British sensibility. Hence, my first thought in the opening scenes of the television adaptation (created by Max Landis but green-lighted by BBC America) was, “What the hell are we doing in Seattle?” It was not the last time I would ask the question.

The TV show has nothing to do with the plot of the book, but at least there is an English detective named Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) and his approach is holistic. That is to say, he relies on the interconnectedness of all things in the universe rather than on pedestrian “clues” such as fingerprints. (There is actually some philosophical sense in this – though not practical utility – which is why the premise works on some level.) He inserts himself into the life of the feckless Todd (Elijah Wood) based on one of his hunches. During the course of the show we learn that Dirk had been part of a defunct secret government project to examine and exploit people with special abilities: in Dirk’s case a knack for stumbling on connections between apparently unconnected things. Another former subject of the program is the flaky Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif). As she explains to Ken (Mpho Koaho), whom she has kidnapped at the point of a gun, "I'm a holistic assassin... I kill whoever I like killing all day and if I killed them, they were my target." She also comments to Ken, “Well you decided it would be better to come with me than die. That was nice.”

There is a murder mystery involving someone apparently killed by a shark in his hotel room. There is a kidnapped girl who apparently has swapped minds with a Corgi. There is a cult involving body swapping. There is a bodyguard (Jade Eschete) who becomes involved with Dirk and Todd. There are vampires, of sorts, who feed off emotional distress. There is Todd’s sister (Hannah Marks) who suffers from hallucinations. There is time travel.

There is too much intentional quirkiness in the show and it is (once again) set in the wrong country, yet it has some charm if you have a high tolerance for absurdist humor. After a shaky start, I actually found myself enjoying it despite its flaws, so Thumbs Warily Up. You may, too, but don’t be surprised if your viewing partner says, “Uh, no.”

Trailer: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency