More New Fall TV Shows

A couple of weeks ago we ran the first part of our annual Good/Bad/Ugly rating of New Fall TV Shows. As it happens, there were too many shows that we wanted to review to fit easily into a single article, so here is the second part. As always, we don't rate a show without watching at least two episodes.

Dragons' Den (CBC Wednesday): Donald Trump has a reputation as being a tough businessman. And while he may be harsh, demanding and pompous, he's a cold, damp, shivering kitten when compared to the business people on Dragon's Den. The concept behind the show is simple — people pitch their business ideas to the Dragons, a group of five highly successful Canadian business people (including the likes of Kevin O'Leary of ROB-TV's Squeeze Play and the owners of Boston Pizza and La Senza), with the goal of securing investment to get their ideas off the ground. The catch is that the money involved is the Dragons' own actual cash. So it's not a matter of just having a nifty product idea, it's a matter of having a viable business plan that will make money. And since this is their own money, the Dragons aren't quick to fork over any cash.
If it sounds brutally harsh, well, that's only because it can be. But at the same time, it can be very compelling. And that makes it surprisingly Good.

Smith (CBS/CTV cancelled, mostly): Sometimes when a new TV show debuts it does really well. But then there are other shows that do so badly it more than makes up for it. Smith was one of these other shows. Pulled from the schedule after three episodes, It sank like a old Russian tank driven off the end of a pier at high tide. Of course, when a show is about professional thieves, and none of the characters is particularly likeable or interesting, it probably doesn't have a bright future. Even with a cast loaded up with semi-famous people like Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, and Jonny Lee Miller, it was pretty well doomed from the word go. I knew the show was in trouble when I watched half of the second episode on tape, got distracted for some reason, and then didn't bother to watch the rest of the episode for three days. But if for some reason you feel the need to watch it, CBS has decided to make all seven episodes that were filmed available online through their Innertube website. So Smith gets to live again, if only online and for a limited time. While this is a cool idea, I'm not sure that's it a good thing that more people may have the misfortune to watch this Ugly show.

Heroes (NBC/Global Monday): TV networks tend to promote their new shows fairly heavily in the months leading up to debut season. Usually this involves lots of advertisements, from short teasers to full length commercials, all of which serve to inform people about upcoming programs. But if you aren't watching anything on the network, it doesn't matter how many times a show is advertised. You won't know about it, and the odds that you might watch it are pretty low.

What might be even more effective to get people watching a new show is word of mouth. My friends kept talking about Heroes, but I don't have cable, so I couldn't watch it on TV. NBC, however, doesn't feel that this should be an impediment. They've made episodes available to view online for free. So I've been catching up on Heroes online.

The show is entertaining, if a little uneven. It follows a number of people, all of whom discover they have one or more supernatural abilities. Some of them are reluctant to admit, even to themselves, that they might have these powers, while others all but celebrate it. Several of them can see the future in one way or another, and they learn that New York will be experience a nuclear event in a matter of weeks, so the plot quickly turns to saving the world (or at least NYC).

The show has some faults. It rambles on about evolution way too much, it has a lot of story threads and it attempts to follow most of them in every episode. Thus far it lacks a single main character, which leaves a half dozen primary characters that all seem pretty central to the story. Some of them are more heroic than others, some aren't even all that likeable, but that serves to make them a bit more realistic. And on a show featuring a Japanese geek who can teleport, a slimy politician who can fly, and a heroin addict who can paint the future (but only while he's high) a little more realism is a Good thing.