Fall TV Preview: Kidnapped
As many people know by now, NBC is offering the pilots to two of their new series premiering this fall via Netflix (both are on the same disc, despite having separate entries in their database). The first was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I watched yesterday and loved (or at least liked greatly). The second, show is Kidnapped. It’s hardly as high profile, and I’m assuming the NBC logic is that perhaps people’s good will toward Studio 60… will spill over this one and they’ll give it a shot as well.
I’m suspecting this won’t be the case. Why? Well for starters, we’ve all seen Kidnapped before. It’s a by-the-numbers story about a rich family in New York whose son is snatched. The bad guys want money. The parents bring in a renegade bounty-hunter to find their son, but then the feds get involved. Blah, blah, blah. Honestly, the series starts out strong. It has enough kinetic energy that you don’t find yourself getting bored and are more than willing to go along for the ride. The problem is after the first half you realize that you’ve been on this ride before, and you happen to know where all the forks in the road lead.
Perhaps if the material were in someone else’s hands. The writing/direction are very mainstream-television. This isn’t to suggest that everything needs to be breaking new ground, but why can’t we just get a fresh angle. Delroy Lindo plays the FBI agent who wants to take over the case. He’s always great, but whenever I see him onscreen I keep thinking of his role in Mamet’s Heist. He was bad-ass in that movie, though anybody can be a bad-ass reading Mamet dialogue. In a way, this project would have been perfect for David Mamet. Unfortunately for Kidnapped and NBC (or fortunately for David Mamet), he all ready has a series on CBS. There’s more…
What’s funny is that you watch a show like this, a show that is by no means awful, just entirely normal, and your mind starts to wander. You start thinking about things you’d rather see on television. There were a few scenes in Kidnapped where the dialogue was so forced, you’d almost thought the character was saying, “I agree, Sally, but I need to move the plot forward,” or something. It got me thinking about action/drama/suspense shows on network television and how they usually have their fair share of thrilling moments, but the exposition always seems to slow things down (I’m looking in your general direction, 24). What if someone made a show with no dialogue. None. There’d be sound– the natural sounds of the surroundings, and people would talk to each other, we’d just never hear it. It’d be in the distance or behind closed doors or, hell, even right there up on the screen. But the audience never gets to listen. Instead the show is entirely based on the characters actions. Would that kind of a show work? Would you watch it? Castaway was hardly a marvel of modern cinema, but damn if those first 45 minutes on the island weren’t awesome to watch. People doing things is interesting. Even if what they’re doing isn’t.
So studio execs. I know you’re out there. How about a green-light on my no-talking series? Drop me a line, we’ll get lunch.
I give Kidnapped six episodes before it gets canceled. Which is actually probably a good thing in the long run. They shoot the FBI headquarters at my work, and damn if they don’t make a mess– sometimes a guy just wants to go get a soda from the vending machines without having to deal with a room full of gaffers.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
[...] For those readers out there playing along at home, you might remember my post on the new NBC series Kidnapped from last month. In it I mentioned how I’d love to see a series on television with absolutely no dialogue. All plot movements would be powered by the characters action’s, not by their words. [...]