The late, lamented Trio
Network had the short life of a mayfly, but they managed
to do an awful lot with very little. With very little programming
being fought over by hundreds of channels, Trio decided to
make a go with the wealth of old broadcast network material
that had been deemed unfit for syndication due to the lack
of the required minimum episodes. In order to really craft
something out of a bunch of shows that died a premature death,
Trio created Brilliant But Cancelled. The
idea was genius. There were an awful lot of very worthy television
shows that never got a proper shot due to any number of reasons:
Bad timeslot, temperamental star, studio regime change, poor
marketing, audience disinterest.
Sadly, the Trio Network was canned, and the name of their
most popular concept can now be applied to the channel itself.
Trio exists only on the web now, and the Bravo channel has
picked up the moniker for their own internet offerings as
well as a TV-on-DVD imprint. One of those titles is Brilliant
But Cancelled: Crime Dramas. Crime Dramas includes one episode each of four different shows (from four
different decades) that have remained popular with fans and
critics long after they’ve been axed.
The
first show on the disc is Johnny Staccato. Johnny Staccato only lasted for 27 episodes
during the 1959–1960 season. It starred the incredible
John Cassavettes as a jazz pianist who does some private eye
work on the side in his Greenwich Village basement club. This
black and white series was not only different than anything
on television at the time, it  was well ahead of its time.
It takes its tone from the great noir films of Hollywood’s
golden age and the characters speak in Raymond Chandler-esque
rhythms. Johnny Staccato was more real, grittier,
more violent, cooler, more hip, and more exciting than anything
going.
The episode provided was the 10th one broadcast, called Tempted.
It is always hard to jump into the middle of a series without
the proper introductions and back-story of the characters,
but in short order everything started to click. The episode
(as I’m sure the entire series) featured a hip jazzy
score written by none other than Elmer Bernstein. Cassavettes,
as always, holds the screen and captures your attention immediately.
He is a powerful and dangerous actor, so as an audience member,
you never feel quite “safe;” which might be the
highest compliment you can pay to an actor. It was obvious
that Cassavettes improvised every take by the way the other
actors responded to him and by the fact that the matching
shots never quite worked every time.
The guest star of this episode was Elizabeth Montgomery,
later Samantha on TV’s Bewitched. Now,
if the only thing you know Montgomery from is Bewitched,
she will pleasantly surprise you here. Even with the black
and white, you can tell that Montgomery is a redhead here
by the shades of grey… both in her hair and in her character.
You also notice right away that she is gorgeous! Not pretty
with a twinge of sexy like Samantha; here she is smoldering
and a real dame.
The story plays out as a cross – double-cross thing
that is actually quite good. The writing is slightly above
average but the performances are top notch. Really, the whole
package is just great: Music, pacing, tone, setting, cast.
Unfortunately Cassavettes, always the maverick, gave the producers
problems from the start. He only did the show to make some
cash for his independent films, and as the show went on he
decided that he needed to make the network break his contract.
Cassavettes was labeled “difficult” from this
point on, and they never finished their full commitment to
the network. At the same time, the censors were pounding the
show over its heavy content of sex and violence as the show
pushed the envelope on themes and subjects further than any
show before it.
Based on that one episode, I found Johnny Staccato to be a fantastic show. With what seemed like a safe plan
to nab viewers who were fans of the old noir films on television
at the time, they managed to make some real art. Take the
time to appreciate how lovingly the black and white film stock
captures the cigarette smoke. Nearly every character has one
lit, so you won’t have to wait long. In addition, there
is other eye candy like real New York exteriors and sets filled
with modern art. Network television hadn’t learned any
of its bad habits yet, so commercial breaks weren’t
even that evident in this episode. Things flowed very nicely.
A feast for the eyes and ears, Johnny Staccato was too good, too hip for television.
4 of 5 pants
 The
next show featured was the Judd Hirsch vehicle, Delvecchio.
The first thing you notice about this 1976 cop drama is that
uber-nebbish Hirsch is cast as an Italian-American. Now, we
all know that Hollywood has a long history of intercasting
Latinos, Italians, and Jews to play one another, but there
is no way on earth that Hirsch passes. To make matters worse,
this episode surrounds Hirsch with some real Italian
actors.
Steven Bochco, who would later create Hill Street
Blues, produced Delvecchio and it
turned out to be a test run for that show. Two future Blues actors have roles on Delvecchio; Charles
Haid who plays Delvecchio’s partner and Michael Conrad
who plays his lieutenant. It is also said that lines of dialogue
and entire plots from Delvecchio found their
way into episodes of Blues.
In spite of the miscasting (couldn’t Hirsch have just
played a Jewish cop instead?) the show is zippy and interesting.
Judd Hirsch is a great actor and does a very good job in a
straight forward drama. His Delvecchio is studying to be a
lawyer and is one of the most honest, incorruptible cops on
television since Jack Webb in Dragnet. The
acting is probably the only thing that makes this an interesting
show. Everything else is fairly rote and generic. Lots of
bad music and really hard commercial breaks abound. Also,
this show was set in Los Angeles, but everything about it
said that it should’ve been a New York show. There are
a lot of New York actors in this who haven’t quite shed
their accents, and the Italian neighborhoods seem more at
home in NY than LA.
The episode presented was the 16th broadcast (out of a total
of 19) in 1976 and it was titled Licensed to Kill.
In it, Delvecchio’s goddaughter commits suicide and
her brothers threaten the lives of everyone around to ensure
she receive a Catholic burial. Delvecchio, aware of the hotheaded
nature of the clichéd brothers, tries to intervene.
The deeper he gets involved, the more foul play he finds.
The show is very ‘70s, so we get lots and lots of exterior
locations. We also see Italians and Jews portrayed on screen
in larger numbers as these groups finally find their “normalization”
and acceptance in everyday society. In this one episode, we
see the producers try to appeal to each and every hot trend
at the time: From a show title that reminds us of James Bond;
to the Italian-centric characters, so hot after Saturday
Night Fever and The Godfather; to
Catholicism, on everyone’s mind after The Exorcist.
For people who like play “spot the guest star,”
there are a few here. We have John Hillerman (Magnum
P.I.), Reni Santoni (Seinfeld),
and John Marley (The Godfather).
Overall, Delvecchio was an interesting if
unspectacular show. Judd Hirsch was fun to watch and things
moved nicely, but there was nothing there that really made
me sit up and take notice like Johnny Staccato had.
3 of 5 pants
 The
third program on the disc is Gideon Oliver.
Louis Gossett Jr. plays the title character, an archeology
professor who helps the cops to solve crimes, and is based
on the series of novels by Aaron Elkins. Dick Wolf, who went
on to make a fortune with the Law & Order franchise, produced Gideon. The show only
lasted five episodes during the 1989 season.
Gideon is the kind of cool, hip, amazing college prof that
you only see in the movies and on television; he even teaches
the underclassman! No professor of his status does that in
any university I’ve ever attended. Whatever. If it makes
parents who write the tuition checks feel better as they watch
this, then I suppose Mission Accomplished. Anyway, Gideon
is also a modern day Renaissance man. Through various scenes
throughout, we see Gideon teaching class, playing chess in
the park, solving crime, kick boxing, 10-speed biking, and
smoothly operating with the ladies.
This episode, entitled Sleep Well, Professor Oliver,
is a two-parter and rather long, but during that length you
get the richest bonanza of guest stars going. No matter how
pandering the plot is (and I’ll get to that in a minute)
you can have a ball seeing Cynthia Nixon (Sex And
The City), Marcia Gay Harden, Michael Rooker, Anthony
LaPaglia, and Tom Sizemore, all during a time when they really
needed the work. There are also a lot of great things to look
at, including dozens of sumptuous sets and lots of authentic
New York exteriors. A lot of money was spent on this show,
but they definitely scrimped on the script.
Ah, the story. While Gideon and his daughter Zina (Shari
Headley – Coming To America) make an
interesting pair, and incredibly talented actors surround
them, there is nothing substantial to hang all of this on.
The story is the worst kind of ill-informed, “ripped
from the headlines” trash and completely insulting to
the viewer. Geraldo Rivera’s “Satan among us”
scare stories and the mess caused by psychologists with a
mission who convinced communities that Satan worshipers ruined
their lives, are the “inspiration” for the crappy
episode. While it started out with real promise, featuring
thrill killers and Rooker as a cop who reluctantly goes to
Oliver for help in the case, it quickly spirals down into
a mess of drugs, murder, snuff films, child pornography, human
sacrifice, satanic cults, and every other societal boogie
man of the era. To top the absurdity of this all off, it is
orchestrated by the man who pulled the Son Of Sam’s
strings. Hooey!
Gideon goes on a journey that is not unlike George C. Scott
had done before in Hardcore and Nicholas
Cage would do later in 8mm. The real difference
is that everything Oliver encounters is so terribly far fetched
(and has since been fully discredited as a bunch of hogwash)
that it undermines the intelligence and strength of the character
and the show. By the time I got to the end of this over-long
episode, I didn’t really care about the outcome at all.
If this was representative of the entire series (2 out of
a total of 5 hours, I guess it is) I can see why this series
failed.
2.5 of 5 pants
 The
final show featured on this disc was 2004’s Touching
Evil. Unlike the rest of the programs here that debuted
on a broadcast network, Touching Evil was
on the USA cable network. Like every cable drama, this looks
like it was shot in Canada and has a color palette of nothing
but sickly greens and blues.
The premise of the show, from what I could ascertain, was
that FBI agent Creegan (Jeffrey Donovan) was shot in the head
once. Now he is back at work, but a little “off.”
Already, I don’t buy it. Any agent suffering that sort
of brain trauma would never be allowed to go back to work,
and I can’t imagine who would. Take your government
pension and retire. Anyway, this show has an X-Files type of vibe, but I couldn’t ever really synch up with
the characters or the premise. Where the other shows on this
disc were very episodic and thus easy to get up to speed with,
this one is most definitely serialized, meaning back-story
(of which there is none) is key. The episode picked, K,
seemed like a most random choice and didn’t allow me
in far enough to care who these people where or what they
were up to.
As for the story itself, I wonder if it would have been more
interesting to an audience who followed these characters from
the beginning. For me, it had no story, no twist, no drama…
you know who did it, you know why they did it, and you just
don’t care. This was the 6th episode in a series that
only lasted 12. Even with executive producers like Bruce Willis
and the Hughes Brothers (Dead Presidents),
there was really nothing here for me. Brilliant? Doubtful.
Cancelled? Unsurprising.
One half pant
Presentation
Most of these episodes look
about as good as you’d expect given their source material
and the era from which they come. Johnny Staccato is quite lovely to behold, Touching Evil looks like any other modern Canadian-filmed cop drama, and
for all its flaws, Gideon Oliver has some
1980s style.
But Delvecchio? Not so hot. The episode might
have been the worst transfer of the four on here. The print
was in fairly bad shape and the image was a bit soft. There
were also no opening credits, so if any background was available
at all in the montage, it was lost to me. I also have no idea
what the Delvecchio theme song sounds like.
Bummer, because seventies' cop show theme songs were pretty
swell.
Extras
Compiling four episodes and over 200
minutes of cop drama, this release features no extras.
Overall
It seems that this disc follows the law of diminishing returns.
It is strong right out of the gate with a show that surprised
the hell out of me in Johnny Staccato. If
Hollywood wants to mine existing properties for a feature,
they could do a hell of a lot worse than Staccato.
Then I get hit with the average Delvecchio,
starring the above average Judd Hirsch. They dip me lower
into the well with Gideon Oliver, although
the guest-star fiesta kept me mildly entertained. Finally,
I’m left to drown in Touching Evil.
I honestly can’t recommend a purchase of this title
as it is so random and scattershot. It would make for a very
interesting rental, though. If nothing else, it makes me hope
they release a full series set for Johnny Staccato,
the real gem of the bunch.
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