TV Review: Fox's 'Minority Report,' 'Rosewood' plagued by unoriginality
Hollywood continues to cannibalize its past with another pair of new dramas this week on Fox that should be awarded prizes for marginality. The slick sci-fi thriller Minority Report, premiering 9 p.m. Monday, is an unimaginative riff on Steven Spielberg's
Hollywood continues to cannibalize its past with another pair of new dramas this week on Fox that should be awarded prizes for marginality. The slick sci-fi thriller Minority Report, premiering 9 p.m. Monday, is an unimaginative riff on Steven Spielberg's 2002 big-screen hit. While the network's Morris Chestnut vehicle Rosewood, set for 8 p.m. Wednesday, is a tiresome procedural about a crime-solving pathologist that rips off every cop and medical examiner drama going back to Quincy, M.D.
Life in post-pre-crime America
Minority Report, which boasts Spielberg as a co-exec producer, is the second series this season to be adapted from a short story by sci-fi maestro Philip K. Dick. (The other Dick adaptation, The Man in the High Castle, premieres Nov. 20 on Amazon.)
Fox's adaptation, featuring Meagan Good (Deception) as a headstrong, risk-taking cop and Stark Sands (Generation Kill, NYC 22) as a psychic crime solver, is on the whole competent, watchable and frequently fun - if entirely predictable.
The pilot opens with a tired two-minute introduction that feels like one of those "previously on" montages.
A series of images accompanied by Good's voice-over, walks us through the plot of the 2002 movie: Once upon a time in the year 2050, Washington, D.C., city leaders set up a pre-crime division that enabled police to arrest people before they committed a crime. These crimes were committed by three young psychics, or "pre-cognitives," who could see murders that are about to be committed.
Four years later, the program was killed after an official was caught manipulating the precogs for his own benefit. The three psychics were installed on an island far, far away and told to live their lives.
Now, it's 2065 and one of the precogs named Dash (Sands), returns to the city as a self-styled vigilante out to stop murderers and other evildoers. Trouble is, without the other two precogs, he never gets to the victims in time. That is until he meets Detective Lara Vega (Good).
Good is terrific as the courageous cop who acts first and thinks later. She and Sands play nicely off each other. Wilmer Valderrama is all but wasted as Vega's boss, while Laura Regan pops up briefly as Dash's caring fellow precog Agatha (played by Samantha Morton in the film).
Dick adaptations, such a Blade Runner, used their futuristic premise to say something about the state of affairs in the world of politics, the economy or human rights. Minority Report features cute future gadgets like a flying cell phone that allows users to take great selfies from above, it has very little in the way of pertinent social commentary.
Judging from the pilot, the only episode Fox has sent critics, there's very little here of any consequence.
'Quincy, M.D.' with hip-hop
Minority Report, may not be terribly original. But at least, it's watchable.
Rosewood is a different matter. A derivative procedural with uninteresting, annoying characters and boring plots, it has little to recommend, save for its glorious shots of Miami nightlife.
Morris Chestnut (American Horror Story, Nurse Jackie), who appears topless in the opening shots of the pilot, plays Dr. Beaumont "Rosie" Rosewood, Jr., a pathologist who has left the medical examiner's office to set up shop as a crime solver for hire.
Chestnut plays Rosie as an aggressively confident, cock-sure professional who likes to brag.
"I'm the Beethoven of private pathologists," he tells his sometime crime solving partner Annalise Villa (newcomer Jaina Lee Ortiz), perpetually peeved kickboxing cop recently arrived from New York.
Perhaps Rosie's narcissistic banter is supposed to be charming. But he comes off as obnoxious, doubly so if out of the office behavior is considered. One of Miami's most eligible bachelors, Rosie gives off testosterone vibes as he tools around town in a vintage canary-yellow convertible Pontiac GTO. He's a desirable piece of man-candy and he flaunts it.
The lead character isn't the only thing wanting in Rosewood. The murder mystery plotlines are as uninteresting and hollow as the dude who solves them.
Like Minority Report, Rosewood raises a fundamental existential question: Why should this show exist? I can't find any compelling reasons why TV is a better place with either show.
215-854-2736