ALARIS' REVIEWS

24th September 2008
Fringe: Pilot (2008)

I was prepared to feel positive about this show, if only because it was promoted as being like The X-Files, but with answers (don't get me started about fracking 'starlight').

Fringe is a new science fiction television series by J. J. Abrams (Lost, Alias), about an FBI agent, Olivia (Anna Torv), who is investigating a pattern of paranormal phenomena. She is assisted by bad-boy genius, Peter (Joshua Jackson), and his mad scientist father, Walter (John Noble, aka Denethor from LotR).

The premise could be fun. The premise could be cool. The premise could be intriguing, compelling, and scary as hell. The show, unfortunately, is none of the above. The actors do a decent job, but they've been landed with largely charmless characters, lacking humour, warmth, brilliance or super cool. The most sympathetic character is Walter, who gives us a decent eccentric scientist, but it's far too little in an otherwise barren landscape.

The execution is disappointingly ham-fisted, with people frequently calling Olivia 'honey' and 'sweetheart' to show us what a hard time she has being taken seriously, instead of actually throwing some smart moves her way to show us how good she is at dealing with pissing competitions.

The gratuitous nudity didn't help, and although you could say 'it's part of the story', the story didn't write itself (although it sometimes felt that way). I also found the heavy handed flourishes on the soundtrack to be somewhat distracting, being the aural equivalent of subtitles for the hearing impaired. (Now she's EXCITED. Now she's SCARED. Now she's making a BRAVE DECISION.)

Despite my copious complaints, Fringe wasn't terrible. It just wasn't very good - not only compared with The X-Files, which often crackled with wit, warmth and freaky ideas - but also on its own merits. A little personality could have gone a long way.

Verdict: Not much humour, not much subtlety, not much cool. A lot of mediocre.

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