Deadline

Typical, just when we here in Australia get the show, I find out it's canned. Saw it for the first time last night (new years eve) at like 2am. Excellent show. Oliver platt is a genius, Lili Taylor is one of the most underated actors (and lookers!) around and the show had exceptional writing. I was just about ready to say stuff sleep, stay up and watch it, and I find out it's been dumped. Darn! NBC - FOOLS!

Only one episode of Deadline has aired, and I'm already a fan. I must admit, I was looking forward to this show way before it premiered, but now that I have seen it, I love it. The show stars Oliver Platt as Wallace Benton, a journalist for a New York tabloid paper called the Ledger. He always gets this information he needs for his stories no matter what it takes.

Wallace works at the same paper as his wife, and they seem to be in the middle of a divorce/separation, tho they're clearly still on really good terms. Benton, along with his journalism, teaches a group of journalism grad students. He uses one of his students, a female-I forget her name, to help him research stories, and she's one of the main characters. He has other students who are in the show less, but they also help him get information for his stories. I love Platt in general, and I think he is perfect in this role. He's passionate about what he does, he works hard, and it looks as tho he's a kind of guy who is always going to try to do the right thing. I like that in a character. Platt is also very funny in this show. I think overall, the show is great. Great characters, perfect casting, and a thrilling plot. I think this show has a bright future.

Oliver Platt is a genius. One could simply repeat that for 100 lines and sum up this series - and anything else in which this rotund brilliant actor appears. He became Porthos in the bouncy Three Musketeers; he was amazing as Hector in the sadly under-rated Lake Placid; he was the perfect barrister in West Wing. Platt shares an ineffable star quality with Orson Welles and that enviable talent with which Roger Ebert described M. Emmet Walsh which I hereby paraphrase: "No motion picture featuring Olliver Platt can be all bad." In this he joins the company of the great Ian Holm and very very few others. As the star of this sadly-missed series Platt had the chance, for far too short a time, chew the scenery in his own series as a talented, irritating, self-centred, brilliant human being. How much of this is Platt and how much acting is irrelevant. It is simply a pity that the show was so quickly cancelled because, to say it once more, Oliver Platt is a genius.

Why NBC had to cut this show? Because of the rating? They don't know yet that sometimes, a show needs time to grow? They don't remember that Seinfeld was not a very successful show the first year? It reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is the coach of a young football team and has the need to cut everybody off!

It was a good show, not the best ever but a good show. I personally think that it's good enough to keep it on the air, at least for an entire season.

Network: NBC; Genre: Crime/Mystery; Content Rating: TV-PG (language, adult content, some violence); Available: Sleuth Channel; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)

Before Dick Wolf became married exclusively to the "Law & Order" franchise, he made an attempt to vary it up with "Deadline", a series that takes all of the pavement pounding, suspect interviewing and case building of "Order" and transplants it into the journalism universe.

The always underrated Oliver Platt headlines as Wally, a famous, rule-bending, ego-maniacal reporter for the New York Ledger. Around him are his journalist students as well as reporter Lili Taylor, editor Bebe Neuwirth and his ex-wife Hope Davis all of which's soul job seems to be to keep him under control. I like Oliver Platt and while he is good here, he isn't great on that level that would elevate the tedium of the rest of the series beyond the safe genre trappings that Wolf has set up for himself. Later, Wolf would find a performance that does succeed in elevating one of his shows with Vincent D'Onofrio in "Law & Order: Criminal Intent".

"Deadline" undeniably has a little more spunk and humor than "Order", most of which is provided by the natural comic personality of Platt. It even slips in some witty journalistic observations via Platt's narration. But it is hard to shake the feeling that we're watching the same show all over again. The structure, the tone, the endings - all vintage "Law & Order". "Deadline" also commits the biggest sin on the head of "Order" in terms of the shamefully broad characters of racial, ethnic and just traditional TV stereotypes. The oddly titled camera can't hide that.

In retrospect, the show is forward thinking in some ways and dated in others. In reruns Wolf proves to be more insightful than I'd expect. "Deadline" is one of the few places you'll hear pre-9/11 references to Osama Bin Laden and stories where Wally fights for free speech in the face of corporate censorship feel prophetic.

However, I just can't get over the fundamental premise of the series. Even in 2000, the idea that newspaper reporters are intrepid truth seekers who actively progress through investigations, interview witnesses, go undercover and even step in to right societal wrongs is from a pre-"Network" era so long ago I can't help but look at it in disbelief. After years and years of lawyers and politicians getting a PR makeover on TV it does only make sense that Wolf and NBC would try to turn another one of the most hated professions in America into something heroic.

* ½ / 4