US TV

In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, The CW
In the UK: Acquired by Netflix. New episodes on Thursdays

Following the first episode of Frequency, a gender-swapped, time-shortened adaptation of the movie of the same name in which police detective Peyton List discovers the old ham radio in her garage allows her to communicate with her cop father (Riley Smith) 20 years earlier before he was murdered, it was clear the show could have gone two ways. Way one was the more interesting. By passing information to the past but in ‘real time’, List can change her present, preventing things from happening or enabling others to occur, but only getting one shot at it – make a mistake and that’s that.

Of course, in that episode, List does make a big change in her past that could have been good but resulted in possibly even worse things happening instead. Frequency could then have been a show about what happens if you keep messing around with time. Okay, it’s been done in the movies with The Butterfly Effect, but I’m sure they could have had all manner of fun. 

Instead, Frequency went another direction, and in so doing became Minority Report, albeit a better Minority Report than the actual TV adaptation. As of episodes two and three, the show has become a cop show in which List knows what crimes are going to be committed and perhaps even by whom but can’t do anything about them since they happened 20 years earlier; however, she can pass the information back to her cop dad who can act on her information and stop crimes taking place before they occur – or at least make sure nothing worse happens or the bad guy gets away.

This isn’t as interesting but it’s still not bad. It also helps that List does at least have an unpredictable future ahead of her and even if her past is broken, she can still try to put right what now’s gone wrong herself with her fiancé (Daniel Bonjour), who doesn’t recognise her and thinks she’s stalking him.

All the same, what we now face is a weekly serial killer storyline which would be hackneyed enough if we didn’t have a time travelling Jack the Ripper to look forward to in Time After Time next year. There have been red herrings so obvious, they must have been left out in the noonday sun for a week before they turned and despite relationships and intimacy being one of the best things about the pilot episode, the show’s producers have put everyone at loggerheads with everyone else. 

Frequency is enjoyable enough, with a reasonably likable cast, but it’s not compulsory viewing. As a police procedural, it’s also a bit ropey, with List forced by the script to do all manner of cop things badly. Fortunately, the show has a flexible enough format that it can change storyline, characters or anything else at a moment’s notice, so definitely has the potential to become hugely more interesting without warning. But whether it will embrace this potential of science fiction or stick resolutely to police procedural remains to be seen.

Barrometer rating: 3
Would it be better with a female lead? N/A
TMINE’s prediction: Could go either way, depending on how prepared it is to ‘pivot’

In the US: Sundays, 9pm, HBO
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Sky Atlantic

I think I’ve shot my bolt on Westworld. It is, of course, really, really easy to be scathing about something. You can pick at the acting, direction, writing, music, and more. 

But when something’s really good, it’s surprisingly hard to say much except “That’s good. And so’s that. And yes, that is, too.”

So it is with Westworld, HBO’s new adaptation of Michael Crichton’s movie of the same name. Pretty much all I needed to say about it I said when I reviewed the first episode. Okay, episode two was a bit of a time-waster that didn’t advance the show’s plot much at all and which felt like it had mysteriously dropped into the series from the movie. But episode three brought everything back on track to being just really, really good.

What I would perhaps add is that as well as looking at questions such as “What is it to be conscious?”, “How different does a consciousness have to be from ours and still be a consciousness?”, “How is consciousness created?” and “If something seems human but we know it isn’t human, how should we treat it?”, the show has now added some new, equally fascinating questions.

One of its hallmarks is now scenes in which the creators of the androids and gynoids in this futuristic theme park sit down and talk with their creations’ deepest levels of consciousness. These started out as simply plot devices to explore the characters and to hint that bad things are happening at the park. But now they have become something more – conversations between creator and created that have almost religious overtones, almost as if God wanted to know what it was like to be mortal and drew some of His creations out of the universe to interview them and find out.

There is a snake in this Garden of Eden, however, and that’s Arnold. Arnold has the potential to destroy Westworld, turning a fascinating musing on the nature of free will, empathy, thought and emotion into a simple clash between Good and Evil. I do hope that’s not where the show is going.

But at this stage, Westworld is getting a double thumbs up from me. It’s smart, poignant, well acted, beautifully made and just a top piece of television.

Barrometer rating: 1
Would it be better with a female lead? N/A
TMINE’s prediction: It’s a limited series so a one-off, but given its ratings, it could well come back for a second season