British TV shows adapted for American television go all the way back to All in the Family and Sanford and Son right up to The Office and Worst Week. This is the first time, however, two expat shows have competed against each other in the same timeslot (10 PM EST, Thursday night).
Eleventh Hour (CBS) follows the exploits of Dr. Jacob Hood, Special Science Advisor to the FBI (apparently, the only one). He's the typical television scientist (Nobel-level expertise in some unnamed specialty and more than conversant in every other area), called in by the feds to investigate "crimes of a scientific nature." Now, there will be inevitable comparisons to a similar show on Fox. (Ever notice how much time the FBI spends investigating the paranormal... on TV, anyway.) The cases on Hour take place all over the country, not just in the Greater Boston area, so it has the upper hand in that department—but when it comes to out-there- WTF did you see that, it's Fringe, hands down. If Hour's point is the real dangers to us come not from the paranormal but from everyday greed and incompetence, point taken. Unfortunately, such points are (1) bor-ing and (2) done better on other shows (3) by regular cops. (Example: Hood investigates a cluster of middle school kids dying of heart attacks in small-town Georgia. Turns out they're being killed by a genius classmate who feels their slacker attitudes are bringing down the school's GPA. Contrast that with the case of an adolescent serial rapist on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit who didn't feel he was hurting anybody because "the people in the movies" he'd been watching didn't seem to mind it.) Eleventh Hour isn't ripped from the headlines as much as it's buried on Page 6.
A better time is had on ABC with Life on Mars. Sam Tyler is a New York City detective who gets hit by a car in 2008 and suddenly finds himself in 1973. His memories of "the future" are intact but he has no idea how he wound up 35 years in the past, or why, or even worse, no idea of how to get back to 2008. Things are so different in a world where PC stands for neither "personal computer" or "politically correct," he feels as if he's "landed on a different planet." (Note: The show's title was inspired by a David Bowie song of the same name, but I immediately thought of a song, also of the same name, by Dexter Wansel.) Sam’s 21st century detective skills make him a valuable, if oddball, addition to his precinct. (Of course, given the number of crime shows the average viewer has been exposed to, any of us could go back three decades and be master detectives.) The fun is watching Sam butt heads with his new colleagues, who nickname him "Spaceman" because of his "odd ideas," like having a computer on his desk or there being such a thing as a hate crime ("As opposed to a 'nice crime?'" his captain asks). He also experiences flashes of his old life that may be clues to how he can get back or why he’s in 1973 in the first place—or maybe he really is as crazy as they think he is...This being not a very good year for genre series, it’ll be interesting to see if either of these shows makes it past the mid-season mark. I’m pulling for Life on Mars.
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