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Hercules Says CBS’ ELEVENTH HOUR Just Makes Him Sleepy!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
Each of the Big Three networks premieres a show tonight based on a show airing overseas. NBC has “Kath & Kim,” ABC has “Life On Mars,” and CBS has “Eleventh Hour.”
A procedural from Scotsman screenwriter Mick Davis (“Modigliari,” “The Invisible”) adapting the U.K. series created by Stephen Gallagher (“Rosemary & Thyme,” “Crusoe”), “Eleventh” stars Englishman Rufus Sewell (“The Holiday,” “John Adams”) and pretty Marley Shelton (who played Dr. Dakota Block in both segments of “Grindhouse”).
It’s about a scientist who teams with an FBI girl to solve strange crimes, but it’s nowhere near as much fun as “Fringe.” I give “Eleventh” a big bag of “meh” and forbid it from fraternizing with my TiVo.
Entertainment Weekly gives it an “C-minus” and says:
… every case is filled with something you've seen before: hotheaded Southerners in coveralls; purry, evil older women; a plotline from The Name of the Rose. It's a procedural procedural. …
USA Today gives it two and a half stars (out of four) and says:
… lands with an unexciting thud between two genres. The cases are of X-Files sci-fi variety, but the stories are insufficiently creepy to keep Files fans happy. The main character is a charming crank along the lines of House, but he's neither charming nor cranky enough to register. Maybe if he had gotten there first, but he didn't. The Eleventh Hour is just too late.
TV Guide gives it a “7” and says:
… A bit generic …
The New York Times says:
… Pizazz is what’s missing from CBS’s new drama, “Eleventh Hour” …
The Los Angeles Times says:
… For a show that features a ticking clock as part of its opening credits -- Hood is so fabulous he is only called in at the eleventh hour -- the pilot gets off to a slow start. … But if you can sit through those opening scenes, "Eleventh Hour" begins to pick up, if not in speed then in complexity. And by its conclusion, it has established an air of creepiness that is both promising and unsettling.
The Chicago Sun-Times says:
… Unfortunately, the mystery on the debut episode isn't too hard to figure out. Next week's does a much better job at keeping you guessing. Viewers may want to reserve passing judgement on "Eleventh Hour" until after they've seen the better-paced second episode. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
… nothing groundbreaking here … The upside is that we didn't mess up another Brit import. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
… will send some viewers fleeing. … the explanations for the episode's mystery are less otherworldly than some of what passes for science on "Fringe," but the denouements aren't always less preposterous. Bad guys on "Eleventh Hour" have a tendency to explicate their evil deeds much like the villains at the end of a "Scooby-Doo" cartoon. …
The Boston Herald says:
… a mediocre adaptation … The first two episodes - one involving human cloning and the other a seeming epidemic of 11-year-old boys dying from heart attacks in a small town - start interesting and unspool silly. The villains at the heart of both mysteries wouldn’t be believable in a Scooby-Doo cartoon. …
The Boston Globe says:
… If you are a diehard fan of police procedurals that have a heavy accent on forensic evidence, and if you are that TV viewer who is still hoping there will be yet another "CSI" series before too long, and if you think Gil Grissom is a god, you still might roll your eyes at "Eleventh Hour." …
Variety says:
… a pretty nondescript "Hour" -- one where time doesn't exactly fly by. …
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… You don't really need 11 hours -- merely two -- to discern that the new Jerry Bruckheimer procedural "Eleventh Hour" is pretty standard stuff … the hour fails to do much more than attach a slightly novel spin onto an already overtaxed genre.
10 p.m. Thursday. CBS.
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Uh no. Not yet at least.
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Oct 09, 2008 5:21:53 AM CDT
Urmm, i'm a Brit, a tv addict, and i've never heard of it!
by big_bubbaloola
Really, when did this air in the UK originally?
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... was a 4-episode series that aired in 2006, starring Patrick Stewart and Ashley Jensen (EXTRAS). The first episode was godawful, and though it improved as it went on, it simply wasn't very good.
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So, who knows.
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all bogus forbidding atmosphere with questionable payoffs....since the majority of U.S. adaptations are even less interesting we can only hope for a miracle. But it doesn't sound like it.
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...make it sound exactly like Fringe (solving mysterious happenings with super science)?
Can a 2nd show like this even have a change to survive? Especially when JJA is involved in the competitor? -
uh uh uh . . .
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But why must they always be blonde??!!
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Hey, Scully was red!
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And a much more believable hot blonde FBI agent.
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The pilot seemed more like a second or third episode. The actors' chemistry was quite enjoyable. Not as goofy as Fringe. Plus, I don't like how everything in Fringe is pretty much tied to Massive Dynamic. Eleventh Hour has more of the X-Files freedom with characters who aren't afraid to bend the rules.
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In just one day I've seen 2 new series making their pilots frame-by-frame remakes of UK originals.
FFS, I knew that it was going to be like this with Life on Mars, having seen the screener couple of months ago (they actually tried and changed some stuff, but considering the format there was no way to change overall story of the pilot), but this?!?
There is NO reason to watch this: same stories are in UK version + Jean-Luc Picard and that girl from Extras. -
Most seem to be blonde!
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