SOMEWHERE BETWEEN: Tuesday 10PM on ABC – Change the Channel (Now!)
There’s no politically correct way to put this. ABC’s summer thriller SOMEWHERE BETWEEN hinges on the frantic efforts of TV producer Laura Price (Paula Patton) to stop the murder of her daughter Serena (Aria Birch) after the fact, when Laura is inexplicably transported back in time to a few days before the crime, but Serena struck this viewer as so distressingly obnoxious that I wasn’t nearly as grief-stricken as the show needed me to be. In fact, it occurred to me that Laura might be better off as she was.
That’s a problem–very possibly for me, but also for the series. And it’s far from the only one. Somewhere Between is the direct opposite of Peak TV (Valley TV? Crevasse TV?), a junky, incompetent blob taking up an hour of primetime for the rest of the summer. Stephen Tolkin’s adaptation of a Korean format is an incoherent mix of cliches and ridiculousness. For the first, take the scene before Serena’s killing, when Laura visits a menacing lady–possibly a ghost–who intones that fate is her enemy, and that in order for someone to survive, another must die. It’s a role that could only be redeemed if Andrea Martin played the part. For ridiculousness, there’s the clue Laura has that another of the serial killer’s victims will be attacked outside a nightclub whose name begins with a “P”. Just when Laura has given up, because there are apparently two clubs in all of “San Francisco” (nee Vancouver), she stares as a part of a neon “R” flares out on a sign, turning it into–you guessed it–a “P”.
The plot also has something to do with alcoholic ex-cop Nico (Devon Sawa), whose brother is about to be executed after being tried by Laura’s husband (“San Francisco”‘s DA) for supposedly murdering Nico’s fiancee, and who was also transported back in time when he and Laura were simultaneously drowning… Maybe for those who stick it out for all 10 episodes, it will eventually make sense. But that won’t solve the problem of Patton’s performance, which seems to be in an entirely different show from everyone else; they’re unmemorable but basically workmanlike, while she does a whole lot of Acting, a bad idea under the circumstances. The director of the opening two episodes, Duane Clark, is unable to simulate anything convincingly like San Francisco, and he lets the cast range all over the place, from Patton’s label-grabbing intensity to the child actresses’ school-project work.
Somewhere Between is billed as a “limited summer series,” and although that’s sometimes a hook for a show that really hopes to come back, this one may be lucky to survive its remaining 8 hours (the ratings for Monday’s special timeslot premiere were awful). The only thing worse than watching it would be getting transported back in time to endure it again.
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