I’ll admit it: I haven’t watched a whole lot of The Eleventh Hour on CBS, although I did catch the pilot and the next four episodes or so. I liked what I saw, but it was probably too procedural for my taste, with the usual “scientific crime of the week” deal that CBS has made bank off with the CSI shows and their ilk. Basically, CBS is the network for procedural crime shows, what with all fifty CSI shows, The Mentalist, NCIS, and pretty much every show on the network that isn’t a comedy. In that sense, it’s no surprise that Eleventh Hour seems to be doing very well, if not exactly gangbuster ratings. Enough for the network to order five more episodes (short of a full season), anyway.
On the surface, CBS’ new medical tech/crime show Eleventh Hour doesn’t really appeal to me, in the same way that FOX’s Fringe doesn’t appeal to me. But I have to admit, my curiosity about Eleventh Hour was substantially piqued when they cast the gorgeous Marley Shelton as not just the female lead, but as an ass-kicking FBI agent who is the bodyguard to brooding, brilliant scientist Rufus Sewell. That’s right; the hot chick is the bad ass in this show, and not the other way around as is often the case in these types of shows. That little tweak in what is a pretty formulaic premise was more than enough to get me sufficiently intrigued.
A lot of things about the new CBS sci-fi show The Eleventh Hour appeals to me. One is finally seeing the great actor Rufus Sewell finally play something other than a smarmy evil European for once; and the other is the idea of the gorgeous Marley Shelton playing an ass-kicking bodyguard to Sewell’s scientist character. That’s pretty new, you gotta admit, since usually it’s the other way around. I’m dying to see how the dynamics of that switcheroo works onscreen, if it does, that is. Anyways, new promos for the show have popped up online.
What’s old is new again, isn’t that how the saying goes? A decade ago, every TV network was trying to emulate the success of FOX’s The X-Files, putting out shows about the paranormal with their own Mulder and Scully. But every single one of them bit the dust, because let’s face it, no one wanted copies when the original was still around. A decade later, it seems like every network has their own versions of The X-Files all over again. CBS has their own, too, called Eleventh Hour, starring Marley Shelton and Rufus Sewell.
If there was such a thing as the Midas Touch, then uber producer Jerry Bruckheimer certainly seems to have it. Every thing this guy touches turns to gold, including hit TV shows and movies (”Transformers”, “Bad Boys”, just to name a few). Bruckheimer’s latest venture is a U.S. version of the British show Eleventh Hour, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, actress Marley Shelton (below, “Grindhouse”) and actor Rufus Sewell (left, “Dark City”) have been tapped to star.