Eleventh Hour
While super producer Jerry Bruckheimer may have the Midas touch with such series as the CSI franchise and other procedural crime dramas on the air, Eleventh Hour was a show that started out strong but didn’t hold onto the early momentum and was cancelled after 18 episodes. While the series isn’t the strongest of the crime dramas on television, it does manage to be entertaining. The complete series is now available on DVD exclusively from www.WBshop.com.
Based on the British miniseries of the same name from writer Stephen Gallagher (and starring Patrick Stewart), Eleventh Hour featured acclaimed actor Rufus Sewell as a brilliant biophysicist who aids the government in crimes involving everything from cloning to cryogenics. Co-star Marley Shelton played the FBI agent who is assigned to protect Sewell during his investigations.
While CSI and it’s Miami and NY spin-offs regularly incorporate forensic science in their cases, the inclusion of science in the Eleventh Hour series didn’t seem to have the same compelling drive to keep audiences tuning in.
Sewell and Shelton are mature, accomplished actors but perhaps there was not enough about the personal lives of their respective characters to keep viewers engaged or perhaps there needed to be a bigger ensemble like Bruckheimer’s other series.
Whatever the reason for the show’s early cancellation, Eleventh Hour is still worth checking out. The cases of the week are interesting and the stories are told in a compelling fashion. Additionally, there were some personal story elements that crept into each episode but never enough to get a full picture of Sewell and Shelton’s characters. While the writers may have thought they’d have several years to unfold the characters and their personal stories, the ratings gods were not in the show’s favor.
Not surprisingly due to the fact that the DVD is being sold exclusively through Warner Brothers and nowhere else at this point, there are no extras on the DVD outside of the eighteen episodes.
