‘666’ perfect for O’quinn
Brace yourself for one of the most tightly packed TV weekends of the year, as Sunday’s returning programs vie for viewers’ attentions against a strong field of newcomers.
666 Park Avenue is a slick, darkly imagined, surprisingly polished looking gothic horror mystery about a young couple, played by ever-likable Dave Annable and Rachael Taylor, who take a job as live-in managers at an old, upscale Manhattan apartment building called The Drake.
The building owner, Gavin Doran, is a suave, older gent, played by Terry O’Quinn, with impeccable taste in all things sartorial and the social graces of a man to the manor born. His wife Olivia, played with an icy chill by Vanessa Williams, is Gavin’s equal in sophistication, but less subtle in her scheming.
As a heritage building, The Drake is sexy and stylish.
At first, the young couple think they’ve lucked into their dream job — a way to pay the bills while pursuing the separate careers they really want to excel at. She’s a would-be architect; he’s a wannabe lawyer. But somehow those jobs just aren’t there, not in the new economy.
Good fortune seems to follow the building’s tenants wherever they go, however, and in whatever they do. Everyone is happy with their lot — until, of course, they aren’t. And when things go wrong, they go terribly wrong.
In less confident hands, 666 Park Avenue might seem pretty awful. O’Quinn, who won an Emmy for playing the mercurial John Locke in Lost, can chew scenery with the best of them, without once looking like he’s going to get indigestion. O’Quinn and Williams’s scenes together, as the two plot and scheme and vow to destroy people’s lives, are exquisite. There are few actors who can pull off schadenfreude with quite the subtlety or carefully controlled glee that O’Quinn can: it’s as if Gavin Doran is the role he was born to play. And Williams, with her icy mien and natural sophistication, makes a wonderful villainess, all the more frightening for how subtle she is.
(Citytv — 9 p.m., ABC — 11 p.m.)
About those returnees — six-time Emmy Award-winning Homeland returns on The Super Channel (Sunday, 8 p.m.). Dexter returns as well, to Movie Central (10 p.m.) for its seventh and second-to-last season. Sunday also marks the return of Once Upon a Time (CTV — 7 p.m., ABC — 9 p.m.), The Good Wife (Global — 8 p.m., CBS — 10 p.m.), Revenge, in its new day and time (ABC, Citytv — 10 p.m.), an episode of Boardwalk Empire written by Vancouver writer-producer Chris Haddock (HBO Canada — 9 p.m.), and a new edition of The Amazing Race (CBS, CTV — 9 p.m.). The Simpsons is back, too, (Fox, Global — 9 p.m.), along with a new season of the cult comedy Family Guy (Fox, Global — 10 p.m.).