Pearson: Crime drama doesn't pay

Published June 14, 2007 at midnight

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Showtime is clearly hoping its dark new crime drama Meadowlands will fill the void left by The Sopranos.

Think The Stepford Wives meets The X-Files meets Peyton Place.

The concept of this eight-part series, premiering Sunday night, is better than the execution. The series begins as the Brogan family is placed in the witness-protection program, which means a new identity for Dad, Mom and the kids in a seemingly idyllic English community.

We don't quite know what Danny Brogan (David Morrissey) did to get himself, wife, Evelyn (Lucy Cohu), and their 17-year-old twins, Zoe and Mark (Felicity Jones and Harry Treadaway), relocated to this scenic paradise. However, we quickly learn that this so-called heaven is really a kind of hell.

It turns out that everyone in Meadowlands is in witness protection; they all have secrets to hide. The community is being monitored by government officials in a nearby motel. No one is supposed to get in or out of the town without approval.

Almost immediately, the Brogans find the neighbors know more about them than they know about the neighbors. There's the perpetually cheery Brenda Ogilvie (Melanie Hill) and her plus-size daughter, Jezebel (Ella Smith). There's the sinister village cop, Bernard Wintersgill (Ralph Brown), and the local doctor and his wife (Tristan Gemmill and Emma Davies).

And stirring the sexual pot is village handyman Jack Donnelly (Tom Hardy), a handsome ruffian who beds women through fear and intimidation. When Jack sets his sights on teenage Zoe, Danny goes ballistic.

So what's not to like about the psychologically ambitious Meadowlands? For starters, it plays off the fact that viewers are nearly as clueless as the Brogans. We don't learn in the first two episodes what Danny did to get the family exiled here (lots of flashbacks to a fire); we just know he's afraid of what's waiting for him in the real world.

Also, this being a British production, the performances are deliberately understated. Even when someone gets murdered, it's with little more passion than someone might express while serving tea and scones.

The production design finds most of the houses in Meadowlands looking the same, only painted different colors. And the serviceable camera work is punctuated by a stylistic decision to start many scenes with a satellite view of the town, followed by a fast zoom in. The novelty wears thin.

And, Showtime, being a pay channel, allows plenty of profanity and sexual innuendo in this new show. (And sometimes more than innuendo.)

Meadowlands is all about the nature of identity and what it takes to start over. Can you erase your past or is it doomed to follow you? Can you truly find security in a community where everyone harbors a secret?

The first two episodes left me mildly curious to see what happens next. I wanted to be on the edge of my seat. I wanted to be enthralled.

That's a tough order when you lack emotional investment in characters who are, by nature, ciphers.

Public can sound off on XM, Sirius merger

After 3 1/2 months of industry lobbying, congressional hearings and intensive Wall Street analysis, the public will have a chance to weigh in on whether it thinks the proposed merger of the nation's only two satellite radio companies is a good idea.

The Federal Communications Commission has issued a public notice seeking comment on the proposed merger of licensees Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. The FCC will decide whether it is in the public interest for both licenses to be controlled by a single company.

The merger, valued at $4.7 billion when it was announced Feb. 19, is also subject to approval by the Department of Justice.

The acceptance of the applications for filing starts an informal "clock" at the FCC, which tries to finish review of mergers within 180 days. That would put a decision sometime in December.

The FCC will have to decide whether to allow the companies to break a condition of the licenses that made the business possible 10 years ago. The agency, at the time, said one licensee will "not be permitted to acquire control" of the other.

The FCC says that interested parties must file initial comments by July 9. Replies to comments are due by July 24. Comments may be filed online at fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs and should include docket number 07-57.

Ambiguity aside, fans watch series 'end'

An estimated 11.9 million people watched Sunday's finale of HBO's The Sopranos, and every one of them seemed to have an opinion about the series' open- ended conclusion.

Viewers had generally cooled to The Sopranos this season; its average viewership of 8.2 million was the lowest since the second season in 2000. But fans turned out at the end to watch the ambiguous final diner scene that left everyone talking.

Nielsen's Sunday rating doesn't reflect how many people will catch that final episode during any of the other six times HBO is showing it this week, or purchase it on demand.

The single most popular episode was the season-four premiere in September 2002, with 13.4 million viewers. That season's finale in December had 12.5 million viewers, and the fifth-season premiere in March 2004 had 12.1 million.

The Sopranos was on the air for six seasons; the episodes shown this spring were considered an addendum to the sixth season. There were no new episodes in 2003 and 2005.

Associated Press

pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

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