Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Crossing’s dramatic opening sure to snare viewers
Spring TV’s string of worthwhile programming continues today and Monday with a couple of new offerings — one a sci-fi mystery thriller from ABC and the other an outstanding example of British drama on PBS.
I love British drama. Even if it’s bad, it sounds marvelously erudite with a British accent.
The Crossing debuts at 9 p.m. Monday on ABC. It’ll grab you early with one of the most dramatic openings I’ve seen in years.
In a chilling panorama, we witness scores of bodies in the ocean. Most have obviously drowned; others are alive and struggling to make it to the surface. Only a few are successful.
Once help arrives and the survivors are attended to, we get the tale of what happened from a little girl. What she relates seems impossible.
“What she’s talking about, these things that we’ve experienced,” another survivor says, “they haven’t happened yet.”
Oooo. Good stuff. Tell me more.
That survivor is one of 47 who lived out of more than 400. He made it to the beach in a remote cove near the small (fictional) fishing village of Port Canaan, Ore. The survivors are refugees from the future. Or so he says.
Trying to sort it all out is skeptical local sheriff Jude Ellis (Steve Zahn, Treme). Ellis had recently traded his stressful life as an Oakland, Calif., cop for the Mayberry-esque serenity of the small coastal town. He came to the Pacific Northwest because his marriage was strained and he had seen way too much violence in the big city.
Ellis was settling in just fine until there was a report of a body down on the beach. It turns out there were hundreds of them.
Once the feds arrive, Ellis teams up with Department of Homeland Security agent Emma Ren (SandrineHolt, MacGyver) to assess the refugees’ claim that they’ve traveled back in time to flee a genocidal war that will take place 180 years in the future.
Assisting Ellis is his loyal deputy and a Port Canaan native, Nestor Rosario (Rick Gomez, Justified). Playing smarmy and officious DHS Undersecretary Craig Lindauer is Jay Karnes, best known for his work on The Shield.
He’s perfectly cast.
Things get exponentially more complicated when Ellis discovers that at least one of the new arrivals is not like the others.
Although also a refugee, Reece (Natalie Martinez, APB) is different. Very different. She’s an “Apex,” a genetically altered human with heightened physical and mental abilities. In the future world, she was a soldier whose job was to eliminate the ordinary humans of the lower “Common” class. Evidently, genocide didn’t suit her.
During the Crossing, Reece became separated in the water from her young daughter, Leah (Bailey Skodje), and is desperate to find her.
Without giving away the big conspiracy revelation at the end of the pilot, I’ll just say that another refugee demands to see the president in order to divulge secret information that will change everything. Drama ensues.
Season 1 will have the pilot plus 10 more episodes. Masterpiece: The Child in Time, 8 to 9:30 today on AETN. You need only two words to convince you that this film is worth watching: Benedict Cumberbatch.
The 41-year-old British actor, best known for his roles on Sherlock, The Imitation Game and Doctor Strange, is worth the price of admission alone.
In The Child in Time, Cumberbatch plays Stephen Lewis, a successful children’s book author. Co-starring is Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire) as his wife, Julie. They are a happy and successful British couple until the unthinkable happens. There’s a moment of distraction to pay the bill and 4-year-old Kate, their only child, disappears from the supermarket without a trace.
The grieving Stephen can’t forgive himself. The stress puts a strain on the marriage. Stephen and Julie drift apart. Two years pass.
The film is a tour de force for Cumberbatch. Masterpiece calls The Child in Time
“a lyrical and heart-breaking exploration of love, loss and the power of things unseen.”
The 90-minute film, adapted from Ian McEwan’s award-winning 1987 novel of the same name, explores the “all-consuming grief” that happens to a marriage with the loss of a child and “with the passage of time, a balance of sorts returns, until hope surfaces and triumphs unexpectedly.”
To be fair, Britain’s Daily Mail reported “mixed reviews” when the film debuted last fall. In general, the plot was criticized as confusing and unrealistic, while Cumberbatch’s performance was praised as “poignant.”
Bottom line: As with anything worthwhile, you’ll never be able to please everyone.