Awake
I like Awake. Or I want to like Awake. I love Jason Isaacs, and after I watched “Case Histories”, an English miniseries based on the novels by Kate Atkinson, in which Isaacs plays a PI who lives and works in Edinburgh (this show is ongoing by the way, go check it out!), I was eager to see he was going to do a show in the states.
In Awake, Isaacs plays a detective who was in a terrible accident, and now lives in two worlds: One where his wife survived and one where his son survived. And the icing on top? The disparate cases he’s working on in the two worlds are connected.
It’s not a bad hook. Its different, certainly not something we’ve seen before and I love seeing Jason Isaacs play a good guy (it blows all of the bad guys he’s played out of the water), but there’s just something...off. It’s very overwhelming. Of course, it must be overwhelming for Isaacs’ character, and it gives us impetus to care about him, but while I like the idea of having more to follow (therefore making it harder to figure out who the bad guy is), it’s very hard to make sense of what’s going on. And if it’s hard for a person who watches TV constantly, I wonder how it is for people who are a little more casual with their viewership.
To put it another way; the reason shows like CSI and Star Trek: Next Gen. work is because they are mostly episodic. They have a general theme each season and story arcs that are presented at the beginning of a season and resolved by the end, but most episodes are able to stand alone.
In contrast, Awake is dependent on the suspense created by Isaacs conflict, so how long will the writers be able to hold on to it? Without conflict-resolution at some point, viewers are left in limbo, and will eventually move on. This is the same problem I have with Once Upon a Time. How long will the residents of Storybrooke be in battle with Mayor/Queen Regina? Once Upon a Time might have made a better miniseries ala Lost; which was slated for four seasons before it even began.
Awake, on first viewing, feels more like a Movie, than a TV show. But I hope I’m wrong, because I love the English feeling it has (much like Life on Mars, which was based on an English series) and I love Jason Isaacs. So here’s hoping.
Did you watch the pilot? What did you think?
