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San Jose Mercury News, Calif., Charlie McCollum Column: Two Cable Channels Boldly Go into Original Sci-Fi

Posted on: Monday, 26 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Jun. 26--Putting aside the popularity of ABC's "Lost," the major networks still haven't come up with a way to consistently sell the sci-fi/fantasy genre to a mass TV audience.

Last season, ABC tried with "Invasion" (very good), CBS heavily promoted "Threshold" (promising), and NBC took a spin with "Surface" (two out of three ain't bad). None made it to a second season.

But the bad batting average for the genre on broadcast television hasn't stopped the cable channels from making sci-fi a big part of their programming. Now, Spike TV, which has never produced an original scripted series before, and ABC Family, which has seen its viewership soar as it replaces repeats of old network shows with fresh series, are sticking their toes in the sci-fi waters.

Spike's "Blade: The Series" (10 p.m. Wednesday) tries to emulate the success of a Marvel comic and the three films based on it, but comes up more than a bit short. ABC Family's "Kyle XY" (8 tonight) initially seems derivative of both "Starman," director John Carpenter's lovely 1984 film, and TV's "John Doe," a 2002 series that lasted less than a season on Fox. Yet, toward the end, it finds something of its own rhythm and holds out the possibility it could be a keeper.

In the world of comics, Blade occupies a place even darker than the one inhabited by Batman. Half-man, half-vampire, Blade wages a bloody and never-ending battle against the creatures of the night. As played by Wesley Snipes on film, he was all edge and cool with a hard-boiled bit of wit for every occasion.

The idea of transferring the character to television certainly has its merits. The show was co-created by David Goyer, a writer with serious fantasy cred including the "Blade" films, "Batman Begins" and "Threshold." But somewhere along the line, something got lost, and while parts of Wednesday's two-hour opener work well, it is also seriously flawed.

The biggest problem is that hip-hop-artist-turned-actor Kirk "Sticky" Jones -- who was very good in last summer's "Over There" series on FX -- is relentlessly grim as Blade. It appears someone told him to play the character in a dead monotone, which drains Blade of his human side. Of course, it would help if Jones were given some lines to work with, but the writing is horribly flat and uninvolving.

Next issue: The series is supposedly set in Detroit, with Vancouver standing in for the Midwestern industrial city. But the Detroit of "Blade" looks nothing like the real-life one (which may actually be scarier) and, even more noticeably, a city with a large African-American population seems to be inhabited almost entirely by white folks.

Where "Blade" does have some bite (I promise, no more vampire puns) is on the fringes of the story, where it gets some decent performances from Jill Wagner as an Army sergeant who becomes Blade's sidekick, Nelson Lee as his tech expert and Neil Jackson as Marcus Van Sciver, the suave head honcho of the bloodsuckers. But it's not enough for me to make a second visit to this underworld.

On the other hand, I might be back for Episode 2 of the much-less-heralded "Kyle XY," even though its first few minutes are such a blatant rip-off of "John Doe" that the creators of the earlier show might want to consider their legal options. Then it starts to ooze the feel of Carpenter's film, in which a guileless alien learns to live and love like a human.

It was almost enough for me to reach for the remote. But I didn't, and the last 30 minutes of the opening episode started to develop a charm and appeal that wasn't a bland copy of better work.

It's still unclear at the end of the episode whether "Kyle" is an alien who has dropped out of the sky or the product of some shadowy government experiment gone wrong. (I'm voting for the latter since the ever-creepy Nicholas Lea from "The X-Files" is lurking on the edges of the story.)

But advancing that part of the story line isn't as important as the way the show begins to establish the relationship between the teenage rain man (initially, he can't talk but he sure is a whiz with computers) and a family that takes him in. There's a warmth to the way the family's teenage kids, who first view Kyle as a freak spoiling their fun, establish a bond with him -- which could bode well for the series in the long run.

By the way, if you don't get ABC Family, ABC itself will be repeating at least the first four episodes on Fridays starting this week (9 p.m., Ch. 7). Given the options -- repeats of "Hope & Faith" -- it might prove to be a smart move.

Remote controls

-- Must viewing this week, particularly if you missed the show in the fall: a repeat of Martin Scorsese's extraordinary "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan" (9 p.m. Wednesday, Ch. 9). Part 2 of the superb four-hour film will be shown the following Wednesday at 9.

-- "Hustle," one of the surprise television delights in recent months, returns with six new episodes at a new day and time: 10 p.m. Wednesday, AMC. A heist series with a cool, retro feel, the series features winning performances from Adrian Lester, as a master thief, and the perennially hip Robert Vaughn as his mentor.

Contact Charlie McCollum at cmccollum@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5245. His blog appears at http://blogs. mercurynews.com/aei.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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