Tuesday's Overlooked A/V: JOURNEYMAN, KIDNAPPED and a Hugo Nominee...

Journeyman was one of the best science-fantasy series we've had so far, and NBC gave up on it after 13 episodes, because it was getting worse ratings than CSI Miami, an established series and part of a clangorous franchise, without trying it in any other timeslots or promoting it much. It starts well, with reporter Dan Vasser (played by Kevin McKidd) suddenly finding himself unstuck in time (to borrow Kurt Vonnegut's phrase), unsure at first if he's having delusional blackouts (his wife, Katie [Gretchen Egolf], is even more unsure). Turns out that he's not, and that he's become an involuntary time-traveler, apparently dumped at the space/time site of various snags in fairly recent history...one of the first of which takes him, apparently randomly, to an early waitressing gig of his late previous fiancee, Livia Beale (Moon Bloodgood, already a veteran in 2007 of another initially impressive timeslip series, Day Break). Vasser's brother, cop Jack (Reed Diamond), is as concerned as Katie, with matters complicated by Jack having been previously involved with Katie, before driving her away (and eventually to wed his brother). What made this series so impressive was not so much the originality of the materials, but the sophistication with which they were used; there's a deftness and solidity to both the human interaction and the fantasticated elements in the series that's rare in any fantastic drama, and they even managed to bring elements of the series to a satisfactory conclusion, if open-ended, at the end of the thirteen episodes they were able to do...all thirteen of which are accessible for free on Hulu and via IMDb's Hulu links.

From Crackle: Pilot

Kidnapped was an NBC orphan in the previous, 2006 season, a serialized drama using a modified Rashomon approach to the kidnapping of the adolescent son (Will Denton) of a wealthy couple (Dana Delany and Timothy Hutton), and the efforts of the parents, their daughter, the FBI, a private investigator also working the case, the kidnappers, various political figures behind the crime, and the young man himself to get by, get over, or get away. The first episode was unsurprisingly exposition-heavy, and rather more pedestrian and fraught than it needed to be, but as the series continues (and all the episodes are available, on DVD and on Crackle, as with the pilot above), the complexities and depth of the drama proliferate very satisfyingly, which unfortunately is not the best way to set up a heavily serialized drama (it helps if you're agressively good from jump, because it's going to be difficult for many viewers to jump in as the series goes along). This was certainly Delany's best series after China Beach, Hutton's best tv work along with Nero Wolfe, and eminently worth seeing through the early scene-setting, as it digs in and reaches a fine conclusion (again, a series that took into account that it might not ever get that "back nine" full-season order of episodes from the network).

And a rather remarkable parody of the Britneys and such, in the service of Very Cheekily celebrating Ray Bradbury, has been rather improbably nominated for the Hugo Award for Short Form Drama...so here's "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" for your delectation and possibly World SF Convention voting consideration...