Two TV things I watched last year, plus another thing, none of which worked

(Another old post from my own blog)

I hate getting rejection letters that say things like “this just didn’t work for me” because that doesn’t help me understand what went wrong. I hate it when I review something and find myself saying the same thing: I want to know why something doesn’t work. With the two TV series and one Netflix film reviewed here, I think I know.Undermind (1965) is a British series I started watching for my book The Aliens Are Here. I dropped it when it appeared the villains would turn out to be mundane fifth-columnists, though it turned out I was wrong (I went back and finished it later). As the book’s focus is primarily on American material that was no great loss.In the opening episode, Anne Herriot (Rosemary Nicols) and her brother-in-law Drew (Jeremy Wilkin) discover Anne’s husband Frank has been brainwashed into committing acts of sabotage. Frank is unusually sensitive to high frequency sound, which is the method Someone is using to control him. Drew and Anne stop the sabotage plot, though Frank dies in the process, but our heroes realize Frank’s not the only puppet saboteur. The enemy, whoever they are, will stop at nothing to see Britain … undermined.

The plotlines of the following 11 episodes deal with ripped-from-the-headlines stuff such as prostitution, corrupt politicians and juvenile delinquency. We also get stories that are completely daft. One scheme involves covert messages in children’s books to make them accept human sacrifice. Another plan is to help incompetent students cheat on their tests and thereby rise above their abilities: Britain’s future leaders will be recruited from the ranks of incompetent, unimaginative failures (no, this is not meant as satire). A plot about Northern Irish opposition to British rule treats the would-be revolutionaries as comic relief, even though the violence of “the Troubles” was underway by that point. On The Avengers I’d be willing to think this stuff was tongue in cheek but Undermind appears to take it seriously.

Future Doctor Who writer Robert Holmes penned the last two episodes and did as good a job as possible wrapping things up. It turns out the subversives behind “undermind” (never called that in the show) are extraterrestrials planning to use their human puppets to build a stargate that will bring a full invasion force to Earth. Holmes doesn’t explain why they drew attention with all their other plots, but a looming alien invasion made for a stronger finish than I expected. The series as a whole is watchable but not at all satisfying. Plus the ending for Anne, who starts dating one of the security men they met, comes out of the blue.

“You can’t legislate against an alien radio signal!”

The streaming Netflix movie In the Shadow of the Moon (2019) isn’t watchable at all. In 1988, several people’s heads mysteriously explode; Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook), a cop, becomes convinced there’s a serial killer behind it. When he meets the killer, Rya (Cleopatra Coleman), she knows a lot about him. She also knows she’s going to die, accidentally, in a matter of minutes. Several years later there’s another wave of exploding heads and Rya shows up again.

Having literally written the book on movie time travel. it wasn’t hard to guess that Rya was a)a time traveler, and b)Lockhart’s granddaughter. In a more entertaining film I’d forgive that — I’m old enough and have watched enough stuff I’m used to seeing these twists coming — but this one isn’t entertaining. It’s too much a stock story about a plodding, obsessed cop vs. a relentless killer.

It’s the backstory that makes it a complete failure, though. It turns out Rya isn’t killing at random: she’s changing the future to prevent a 2024 terrorist incident that led to civil war. Time-travel inventor Dr. Rao (Rudi Dharmalingam) explains midway through the film that Rya isn’t just trying to kill the people who led us into civil war, she’s out to kill the people who inspired them. For comparison he explains that killing Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee wouldn’t have stopped the 1860 Civil War; it  would take killing everyone who influenced the leaders to see civil war as the answer to the nation’s problems.

Dude, WTF? Are writers Gregory Weidman and Geoff Tock seriously equating Jefferson Davis, who led a secessionist nation founded on race-based slavery, with Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery? The issue in 1860 wasn’t the “idea” of civil war but the idea that black Americans can and should be property. What does Rao imagine the better alternative to Civil War would have been — letting the South secede to preserve slavery?

Nor does Rao explain how slavery and secession map onto the civil war of 2024; we learn nothing about the issues in that conflict. I presume that’s intentional: by not giving either side’s view, the movie avoids taking a political stance that might offend someone. Trouble is, Rya’s killing people who, as Rao admits, are not directly responsible for the terrorist attack or the war. We’re ultimately supposed to believe murdering them is justified but that requires a much stronger argument than this mess offers.

“If it begins with you warning me here on this beach then it always ends with me dying.”

Since I’m on the topic of TV that flopped, I’ll add my review of Frequency from 2016-17 It was one of two CW series that didn’t receive full-season orders from the network that year, which was a good choice on their part.

The terrific 2000 movie of the same name had burnt out cop Jim Caveziel contact his long-dead firefighter father (Dennis Quaid) in the 1960s via an old ham radio and a freak sunspot condition. He saves his father’s life which leads to Mom dying at the hands of a serial killer; can the cop direct his non-cop father to crack the case and save Mom?

Similarly the series has present-day cop Raimy Sulliven (Peyton List) saving her cop dad’s life in 1996 through a ham-radio that talks across time. But further changes ripple out: in the new timeline Raimy never met her fiancee, and her mother died at the hands of the never-caught Nightingale Killer. Can Raimy and father (Riley Smith) work to change things back?

This started well, but I lost interest fast. The trouble is it’s 90 percent a straight cop show: Raimy’s dad is an undercover cop so we hear lots about the dangers and his moral compromises and wear and tear on his family life — if I wanted that, I’d see Chicago Blue or something. And where 2000 and the 1960s set up sharp differences between the two settings, the 1990s just aren’t different enough from now to generate the same interest (though VH-1’s Hindsight managed it). I will give them credit for a genuinely happy ending episode, but I ain’t weeping any tears it didn’t run longer. “I washed them in holy water!”

#SFWApro