In the US: Mondays, NBC, 10/9c
In the UK: Not yet acquired
The secret to any show based around a central mystery is that both the central mystery and the quest for its solution has to be interesting. Manifest, which is by equal measures a knock-off of Lost, The 4400, FlashForward, Six Degrees and The Whispers, just about manages to make both of these things interesting. Just about.
The show sees a whole bunch of people – some strangers to each other, some not – take off on a plane journey in 2013 and land in the US in 2018. Time hasn’t passed at all for them, but for everyone else on Earth, time has passed normally and everyone has got on with their lives, assuming their loved ones died in a plane crash five years earlier.
On top of that, 20 or so of the mysteriously returned passengers start hearing voices telling them what to do, and when they do as bidden, it turns out the voices do know what they’re talking about. Principally, unlucky in love cop Melissa Roxburgh and her brother Josh Dallas end up solving crimes together, often through bizarre coincidences, usually accompanied by the frequent reappearance of their flight number, 828, in everyday life.
What?
The central mystery, of course, is what happened to the plane. Hints so far have been reassuringly secular. Although the first episode suggests that there is some element of predestination involved, with Dallas’ kid gaining access to a life-saving leukaemia treatment that wasn’t available in 2013, but is in 2018, thanks to another one of the plane’s passengers, for example. But, it’s become clear over these first three episodes that something else is at work, something (literally) shadowy and potentially even malevolent. All of which suggests either aliens or time travellers, doing their best to fix some wrongs in their past using their foreknowledge.
Which could be cool. Or it could still be God and his angels versus Satan and his evil minions. Which could be cool, but a bit stupid in context. Or it could be something else made-up and not very cool at all.
At the moment, it’s just about cool enough that it’s enough to sustain my interest. It’s being dripped out quickly enough that I’m not feeling too impatient, and although everything about the drama and this central idea is clichéd, particularly the possibly evil NSA investigators, it’s still done just about smartly enough than my curiosity is still piqued.
MANIFEST — “Pilot” — Pictured: (l-r) Josh Dallas as Ben Stone, Jack Messina as Cal Stone — (Photo by: Craig Blankenhorn/NBC/Warner Brothers)
Who?
As I predicted in my review of the first episode, however, most of each episode is taken up with the random cop dramas instigated by the voices, as well as the soapy soapiness of people trying to cope with the fact that their loved ones might have moved on, twin sisters have grown up, parents have died and children have gone to jail. You do feel like telling everyone to suck it up and get on with it a lot, every episode.
Despite the ensemble cast and characters, there’s also nobody who’s actually really any good or watchable among the lot of them: the characters are unremarkable and tedious, there’s not one good line per episode, and the actors have so little of note to work with, you could have Mark Rylance and Benedict Cumberbatch read the scripts to you and you’d still barely remember it. There’s no Mark Rylance or Benedict Cumberbatch in this cast, mind.
All of which makes Manifest a show I can’t recommend to anyone. There’s no point to watching this show, unless you happen to like a slightly sci-fi crime procedural in which everything gets solved thanks to some help from some voices.
However, unfortunately, I’ve now watched three episodes, and there’s been just enough interest kindled in me by them that I’m going to stick with it for a while. To be fair, that’s more than FlashForward managed, but I doubt I’ll make it for a full Lost run. Then again, I doubt Manifest itself will make it that far, either.
I’m still not 100% sure exactly how the Pilot Light TV festival works. Apparently, it’s on season 4 now, but although that’s scheduled for next year, we’ve already got some events linked up for the very near future. Postponed from August but now to be held on Sunday 14 October at 5:30pm at Gorilla in Manchester is a retrospective of Eerie Indiana featuring a Skype call with cast member Justin Shenkarow.
Created by Oscar nominated writer Jose Rivera & Mark Shaefer and directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins); Eerie Indiana follows Marshall Teller, a teenager from New Jersey who has just moved to the town of the same name as he investigates the weirdness lurking under the facade of a totally normal suburban town. Regularly billed as the ‘Twin Peaks of Family TV’, Eerie Indiana was filled with Twilight Zone-esque mysteries that it’s protagonists investigate week by week, essentially being a version of the X-Files, before Mulder & Scully were even thought of, according to Den of Geek.
Join us at Gorilla for a very special selection of episodes from the first series, plus two exclusive live Skype Q&As with the show’s Oscar nominated creator Jose Rivera, and actor Justin Shenkarow.
You can book tickets for the princely sum of £13.20. Enjoy!
In Australia: Mondays, 8.30pm AEST, Showcase
In the UK: Not yet acquired
You’ve got to admire Showcase’s guts in launching a new drama not only written by but starring a complete newcomer to TV acting and writing. Yet it’s a brave decision that’s paid off magnificently with Mr InBetween, which sees Scott Ryan playing a nightclub bouncer who also moonlights as an enforcer and hitman for Damon Herriman.
Despite being billed as a black comedy, the first episode was more a drama with a hint of comedy – a character piece without jokes, just amusing yet plausible situations, as we see Ryan’s constantly smiling killer alternate between day job and personal life, throwing people off walls and getting tongue-tied when a girl likes him. Ryan, who was himself odd-jobbing as a pizza delivery man and taxi driver when the show got the green-light, is impressively naturalistic and convincing, the kind of bloke you’d have jokes with down the pub, yet always be a bit wary of because of his constant smile.
Episode two is an even darker affair than the first episode, with Ryan going on a revenge mission against the guys who hurt his mate – or the guys he’s told did it, anyway, and we see what happens when Ryan accidentally kills the wrong the person. Yet buried in the middle of the episode is a downright hilarious conversation between Ryan and his daughter, in which he disabuses her of the notion that there is a Santa Claus (“To be honest, I don’t even know how he and Jesus are related”), before spinning her a long yarn about the time he met a real-life unicorn (“It winked at me.”).
Episode three, meanwhile, explores Ryan’s character as he goes to court-mandated anger management, where he picks a fight with a wife abuser, declaring himself a cut above the low-life’s he’s with – he regards himself as doing a public service. But it’s also a bit more darkly comedic, as he has to deal with a fight between his mate and his Russian brother-in-law, who has decided to rob him.
Mr InBetween
The first three episodes of Mr InBetween have all been consistently excellent. The half-hour runtime means each episode is tightly focused with zero flab, yet still manages to allow for characterisation and character development. The show never makes Ryan’s profession ridiculous, but takes both him and it deadly seriously, even if he does occasionally like a laugh and wind up in some odd – but not too odd – situations thanks to his mates.
