Cumming adds charm to basic ‘Instinct’
There are gritty police procedurals, and there are the “pretty” variety, for lack of a better word that doesn’t conveniently rhyme. “The Wire” was gritty. “Murder, She Wrote” was pretty. So is “Instinct,” a procedural premiering on CBS on Sunday, March 18, starring Alan Cumming as a former CIA operative lured back to law enforcement by the New York Police Department.
Cumming plays Dr. Dylan Reinhart, who quit the agency for a stand-up gig teaching abnormal psychology in college.
Through a clunky and not very credible maneuver, Reinhart ends up consulting on a serial murder case which seems to link to his book, “Freaks.” He is teamed with NYPD Detective Lizzie Needham (Bojana Novakovic), who is still wrestling with the aftereffects of a personal loss from a year ago. Reinhart has his own personal battles, but he doesn’t regret leaving the CIA a few years earlier when he met and fell in love with his now husband, Andy (Daniel Ings), a bar owner.
The crimes created by the series writers to occupy Reinhart and Needham aren’t very credible, which makes it hard to suspend disbelief. But “pretty” procedurals don’t want to scare viewers that much. There’s no sense of threat to the crimes Needham and Reinhart encounter in the first three episodes, any more than we felt threatened by 12 years of murders in quaint and fictitious Cabot Cove, Maine.
The series, created by Michael Rauch and based on James Patterson’s novel “Murder Games,” isn’t
going to revolutionize broadcast TV, but it has an appealing sense of fun. Cumming is the reason you’d want to watch “Instinct,” just as Tony Shalhoub made “Monk” and Angela Lansbury made “Murder, She Wrote.” Cumming and Novakovic also have terrific chemistry, the kind that David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel had in “Bones.”
Cumming’s character is rather overfreighted with issues involving his father ( John Doman). Dylan believes his father has been withholding love and approval for all of Dylan’s life. The moment comes dangerously close to the antiquated cliche that people “become gay” because of an overprotective mother and an emotionally unavailable father. Tell it to Dr. Phil, as Judge Judy might advise.
Of course it is groundbreaking to have a lead character in a drama who is gay, but the news is delivered in a matter-offact manner, not overhyped with an overture and a lot of (rainbow) flag waving. We’re more excited that Cumming gets a chance to carry his own show with a character distinctly different from Eli Gold on “The Good Wife.” The show’s title is a little odd, though, because Reinhart doesn’t act on instinct, but, rather, on the basis of keen observational skills and a postHolmesian ability to size a person up in a matter of seconds.
In spite of its overall lack of imagination, “Instinct” has promise, but more important, it has Alan Cumming.