Review of Prodigal Son, Mondays at 9pm EST on Fox
Growing up, I did not have cable television (except for when my family stayed in hotels). So the advent of Fall TV meant that there were actually new shows to watch on television every evening of the week (and not just on PBS)! Now we live in a blessed age where approximately three shows a day drop onto streaming platforms and even broadcast networks have started programming more seasonal offerings outside of the traditional September to May schedule. The result is that we’ll all likely have ten shows still on our watch lists when we ascend to the Great Big Couch in the Sky. As an avowed pop culture addict, I wouldn’t choose to live any other way. Still, I look forward every year to seeing what new offerings network television has to offer, creating a schedule of what I want to check out, and determining what I’m willing to commit to (at least for a few more weeks).
Admittedly, there were not a huge amount of shows that intrigued me enough to watch even the pilot this year. (Optimist’s Translation: more time to watch streaming shows as they drop throughout the fall and winter.) That being said, I test drove the police procedural Prodigal Son that premiered last week.
The premise of Prodigal Son is that Malcom Bright (Tom Payne) is both a criminal profiler and the son of Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), a serial killer known as the Surgeon who was captured and incarcerated in the late 1990s. The pilot episode sees Bright working as a consultant to an NYPD case only to discover that the case is a copycat of four murders his father committed years ago.
Familiar territory? Yes, and that is one of the show’s biggest potential pitfalls. A detective/profiler/forensic pathologist with a personal connection to a killer/landmark case/crime is a trope mystery lovers have seen before in television, movies, and books. However, the police procedural format as a whole is not particularly new either and that doesn’t stop viewers from enjoying interesting characters and unusual cases. More episodes should help shed light on whether the writers are able to find new perspectives on these tropes or fail to make them work with these characters and within the particular environment they’ve created in Prodigal Son.
My other biggest concern with this show is that it too often uses shock factor to elicit viewers’ emotion rather than relying on the strength of the writing and acting without layering on gore. For example, the show’s opening scene depicts Bright entering a butchering process plant that has a series of severed heads preserved in jars in the background. Obviously, that is a horrifying concept. However, on screen I couldn’t help but think they looked like cheap Halloween masks in jars filled with goop. It certainly didn’t scare me; it just seemed hokey. Similarly, later, the director uses a tight closeup of Bright’s face screaming, eyes bugged out, after he has a nightmare about his father. This kind of in-your-face, “isn’t this scaaary?” tactic definitely backfired for me (and I’d wager for many other viewers as well). Rather than letting the storytelling and filmmaking stand on its own in evoking reactions from viewers it seems like the creators are smashing the “break open only in case of emergency” toolbox too frequently.
The show’s house style is fairly stark, relying on low-key lighting and heavy shadows and filters that seem to leach almost all color from the screen. A very minimalist color palette of creams, grays, and blacks only enhances this effect. Many shots also used shallow focus, meaning only part of the image is in focus and the rest remains blurry. To be fair, this cinematographic choice may be trying to illustrate how much viewers don’t know. We only know a little bit of the history between Bright and his dad and we know about it primarily from Bright’s perspective. However, I found the frequent use of shallow focus a bit distracting because it was so pervasive.
Now, what I really liked about the show were the actors and performances. Michael Sheen’s Dr. Whitly/Surgeon was truly creepy and seemed to hint at layers of characterization that will (hopefully) develop over the course of the season. The show also did a good job of using him enough to establish his backstory and relationship with Bright without letting him overly dominate the story.
In addition, there are a trio of treasures playing supporting characters that I hope to see more of in the coming weeks. First, certified National Treasure Lou Diamond Phillips plays Gil Arroyo, an NYPD cop with a connection to Bright that’s explained at the end of the pilot. We don’t learn much about his character in the pilot other than his trust in Bright but I always enjoy Phillips. He also serves as a more grounded character compared to the heightened Bright and Whitly and their strange father-son relationship. Second, the show features Gilmore Girls treasure Keiko Agena who played Lane in the beloved coming-of-age series. Here, she’s Dr. Edrisa Tanaka, a forensic pathologist who nervously geeks out over identifying wounds with Bright, injecting a nice bit of comedy into an otherwise grim show. Finally, Scandal treasure Bellamy Young, who played Mellie Grant in the political drama, now plays Jessica Whitly, the mother of Malcom Bright and wife of serial killer Malcolm Whitly. In the pilot she appears like an aristocratic society mother, almost as if Edith Wharton’s matriarchs were revamped for the 21st century. Still, Young’s performance hints at the trauma below the character’s shiny superficiality and I hope the show will explore that as it progresses.
Verdict: I’m not yet ready to hit the “record series” button on my DVR. However, I was intrigued enough by the setup and the actors to keep watching for several more weeks to see how the story develops.
Wired Wordsmith 