Second Sight

So I've started seeing Clive Owen here and there the last few months and I look him up to see what other work he's done. I end up searching for this set of TV episodes and Greenfingers. Both are movies I couldn't find in my neighborhood movie rental spot. Anyway, I loved this show. All eight episodes kept me interested, though I was disappointed with the Tully just suddenly moving along aspect, and Clive rules the small screen just as well as he does the big screen. I highly suggest anyone that enjoys Clive's work pick these up, especially the 1st two dvds (2 parts to each one). Oh, and some great cameo's but well known actors as well. Overall, an A- for the set.

Clive Owen stars as a police detective losing his sight in "Second Sight," a 1999 TV series.

Like Benedict Cumberbatch, Clive Owen first found popularity as a television actor. In Second Sight, he plays DCI Ross Tanner, a man who discovers he has a rare eye disease which may go into remission, stay the way it is, or ultimately he will go blind. The disease also gives him the ability to pick up when something is wrong in an interrogation, and he suffers from hallucinations.

He's terrified of his superiors and people working under him to find out the truth, so he enlists the help of his second in command, DI Catherine Tully (Claire Skinner).

Along the way Tanner learns to use his other senses to help his detecting, realizing that not every clue is visual.

Excellent series with wonderful acting by the very hunky Owen. I'd crawl to see him in anything. The subplot is about Tanner's relationship with his ex-wife and son.

Loved the story lines and wish this series lasted longer.

I have to take issue with one of the remarks here. Someone was angry that subtitles were suggested and thought it was awful.

I've been to England several times, I've seen so many mysteries and detective stories and movies from England it's not funny. But now I'm partially deaf. Also, the British idea of sound is to do it very naturally - it's really not filtered the way U.S. sound is. So some of those dialects can be hard to understand.

I used earphones with this, which I suggest for this very excellent series because it has no subtitles.

I loved Inspector Lynley, but the subtitles didn't show up on the disks and I missed probably 40%. Now that it's on streaming on Netflix, I plan to go back and see it. Sorry but this is reality. People love this stuff and it's too hard to hear and/or understand without some help.

Try having some understanding of an aging population and your fellow man.

My TV watching is confined almost exclusively to PBS and the British shows, which are usually the only things on TV worth watching. BUT... this particular show suffers from an excess of unintelligible dialogue that only added to the confusion of the muddled plot and story, the jerky handheld camera work, the appallingly choppy editing and uncertain direction. May I suggest to Rebecca Eaton that she add sub-titles to this show (which still has a few episodes to run) so that American viewers can truly enjoy rather than endure the British dialects and poor diction of the performers.

Clive Owen brings his almost complete absence of charisma and scant repertoire of nuances to "Second Sight" as a detective who may or may not be losing his sight depending on who you believe; host Diana Rigg or the doctor characters. A much too pat and uninspired Brit detective series about a workaholic divorced sleuth with personal issues, DCI Tanner (Owen), "Second Sight" is full of nonsequiturs, plot holes, and just plain shoddy work. Owen does the usual connecting of dots expected of mysteries while maintaining the pitiful I've-been-screwed-by-life attitude you would expect of a terminal cancer patient not one whose just may be going blind and especially not one who sees perfectly when required of the plot and otherwise when not. All the while, Tanner has what Rigg describes as a "torrid" affair with his sidekick which is little more than a few seconds in the sack and sees visions (the second sight thing) which are rationalized by some mumbo-jumbo about his medical condition. Pale in comparison with the Brit "Cracker" series, "Second Sight" is little more than par fodder for TV junkies. I gave up on it with about 10 minutes to go in the 2nd DVD. (C+)

Second Sight is a basic British crime drama but with a twist -- the lead detective might be going blind. So the show is not just an anthology series, it has a running plot about the man's increasing sight issues that may or may not lead to loss of sight. This leads to a bifurcated show: the story of the possible blindness is extremely well done; it's touching, effective, but not overly maudlin. But the actual detective stories are not very good: the plot holes are completely insane, the detective work is almost silly; it often feels as if no one cared about the story lines as long as the larger theme was well-developed.

However, what really saves the show is Owen. He is absolutely terrific dealing with the possibility of eye sight loss: the show never wanders far from his dilemma. Why this man never became a major star is the most baffling mystery of all here.