TV Review: The Cape, NBC Flushes the Toilet Again

I’m not going to spend this whole review talking about NBC’s troubles (they’ve been well documented from everything to Conan O’Brien to 30 Rock making fun of their own network nearly every week), or even call them the worst broadcast network out there (that would actually be CBS, who are the top rated network through a successful strategy of catering to old people that don’t watch cable). I will say though that a show like The Cape would almost certainly not exist on any other broadcast network because none of the others are this desperate.

Desperation can be a good thing though, it can lead networks to take chances on shows CBS never would, and The Cape is example numero uno of that. The show is as strange to television as Gnomeo and Juliet is to theaters, but the big difference is that it’s not a cartoon (at least literally), not for children, and is technically a drama. Yet somehow manages to involve a grown man fighting crime in a bulletproof, elastic cape assisted by a carnival of circus freaks plus a token midget and a villain with the skin of a snake.

Yet despite the show’s strangeness there is an odd lack of energy behind everything. Many scenes just sort of lie there without any propulsive motion, and the weird lighting/cinematography choices seem to sap the juice out of even the action scenes. At times it feels as dreary as the worst episodes of Criminal Minds. Plus, the show has a flat-horrible lead actor in David Lyons. Who singlehandedly reminds us of why Hollywood needs to cool it with shoving British/Australian actors down our throats for roles they clearly aren’t cut out for (you could say the same about The Walking Dead’s leading man Andrew Lincoln).

However there is one thing that really works and it’s the depiction of the evils behind a privatized police department. It’s pretty pitiful that the only network show on television willing to take a stand against privatization of government industries by evil corporations is The Cape. The main villain of this show is a British billionaire (because featuring an evil American billionaire might be too realistic) who has privatized the city’s police force for his own personal gain, and is trying to acquire the prisons and media to have a full police state.

Supporting Scene Stealer: James Frain as the evil billionaire has been so much better in shows like True Blood and The Tudors, but he does the most he can here, adding energy wherever he can, and a show could do worse for a lead villain. Keith David also seems to be having a pretty good time camping it up as the carnival leader…I’m glad somebody is.