Eleventh Hour (2006), 4 episodes
Eleventh Hour is a four-episode (each about 68 minutes) crime series starring Patrick Stewart as a government scientist and Ashley Jensen as his sidekick/bodyguard. This show inspired a short-lived American series of the same name starring Rufus Sewell in Stewart’s role.
Depending on who you ask, the series is variously billed as crime, horror, and science fiction. It’s definitely crime; it isn’t horror or sci fi by any real stretch of the imagination. It follows the investigation style of your typical crime shows, and while the cases are science-based, they have their roots in science of the present and immediate future. The cases here involve human cloning, a smallpox outbreak, global warming and cancer treatment.
The problem with Eleventh Hour is that it’s never particularly interesting. Its cases are interesting in theory, but we slog tediously through them, particularly as everything goes pretty much by the book (only the final episode, “Miracle,” generates any real mystery – it’s also the only one that’s any good). While this may be the way investigations go in real life, we don’t watch television for the realistically mundane. And while the actors do fine, the series tends to neglect the human element, and the lead characters aren’t compelling enough to generate interest on their own (they’re hardly developed at all). Director Terry McDonough uses some epic wide pans and slow-motion shots in an attempt to make the show feel more thrilling than it is, but to no avail. And when the stories get around to doing anything, they often strain credulity (plus Hood’s flagrant atheism feels forced).
These scientific topics might be socially relevant, but Eleventh Hour isn’t very well written, and it isn’t very interesting. I give it a 4.
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