The cutthroat world of American TV is an unforgiving place. It’s not a place where new TV shows are given a chance to slowly find their feet and grow an audience. If a show on mainstream American television isn’t immediately successful then it’s shown the door. This was the case with Alcatraz, a high-concept and intriguing mix of sci-fi and police procedural that gathered an appreciative cult following when it aired earlier this year. But cult followings don’t pay the bills as far as TV executives are concerned so it was cancelled after its first season. That’s why this collection is titled “The Complete Series rather than “The Complete First Series. It gives you 13 episodes and then that’s it. Forever!
Springing from the imagination of former Lost writer Elizabeth Sarnoff, Alcatraz presents an alternative history of the legendary island prison, from which only Clint Eastwood ever came close to escaping. Traditional history says that on the night of March 21st 1963 when the prison had finally been closed down, all the prisoners and guards were safely transported off the island. But that’s not what happened, not at all! So says grizzled Federal Agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill) at the beginning of every episode, so that if you watch a few of them in a row it starts to become quite irritating.
No, what really happened was that 256 prisoners and 46 guards vanished without a trace before they could be transported. Their disappearance was covered up by a series of lies about chemical leaks and fatal failed escape attempts. And then in 2012 the prisoners start reappearing, apparently having not aged a day and they begin going about their lawless ways again. Only this time they all seem to be acting with a sense of purpose, murdering specific targets and apparently all looking for a set of mysterious keys.
Hauser, who at the time of the convicts’ disappearance was a rookie San Francisco policeman, recruits a team to hunt down them down and get to the bottom of their mysterious “time-jump. The team consists of Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), a Detective who is the granddaughter of one of the time travelling jailbirds, Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia) a conspiracy theorist novelist who wrote a bestseller about Alcatraz and Dr. Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), a criminal psychologist who, in the grand tradition of shows like this, is hiding a Mysterious Secret.
We’re currently living in a Golden Age of American Television. Shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire are complex, character-driven and intricately plotted creations that are more cinematic than 90% of mainstream movies. Alcatraz isn’t one of them. What it is is an unashamedly entertaining popcorn sci-fi thriller. While those previously mentioned shows air on the creatively adventurous cable channels AMC and HBO; Alcatraz aired on the Fox network, which isn’t really known for challenging programmes and although it has some pretty smart twists and turns plot wise, by the end of each episode everything has to be spelled out to ensure the dumbest people watching aren’t left behind.
The cast are all perfectly watchable, even if they don’t get much to play with in terms of character development. Although sometimes you do wonder whether Sam Neill’s weary, seen-it-all-before demeanour is a character choice or just the actor being unhappy about having to slum it on TV. One of the best performances comes from Jorge Garcia; although Lost fans may initially find it hard to buy Hurley as a PHD carrying writer he manages it with aplomb and, as with Lost, he’s the heart of the show but this time he also gets to be the brains. The real standout of the cast though is British actor Jonny Coyne who, in flashbacks to when the prison was operational, plays the sadistic Warden James. He makes the character into a real Mephistophelean bastard and his performance is so good it forces you to use words like Mephistophelean.
The show is never less than exciting although it does sometimes threaten to turn into a standard killer-of-the-week’ police show when the sci-fi elements are pushed to the background, and some episodes are just filler that don’t further the overall plot at all. But even then there’s always a shoot-out or a Bullit style car chase through the bumpy streets of San Francisco around the corner to keep you interested. It’s perfectly undemanding but involving sci-fi, along the lines of Quantum Leap, and it’s one of those insomnia inflicting box sets that gives you a serious case of the just-one-more-episodes.
This is why I can’t recommend Alcatraz at all. It’s so addictive that when the last episode finishes and you realise you’ve now been cut off for good it’s maddeningly frustrating. And this isn’t one of those cancelled shows where the writers realised they weren’t coming back and so managed to tie everything up by the end of the series. They clearly thought they were getting another chance because the last episode not only leaves a huge number of questions unanswered; it ends on a ridiculously suspenseful cliff-hanger! I hope this box-set doesn’t sell well in the UK, because if it does television sets will be being thrown out of windows all around the country and people will be boarding planes to Los Angeles planning to hunt down and murder Fox TV executives.
Overall Verdict: If there was more to come this would get an extra star, but there isn’t so becoming a fan of Alcatraz is ultimately pointless. Don’t get involved!
Special Features:
Deleted Scenes
Reviewer: Adam Pidgeon