"Mysterious Ways" : New TV series bound to draw some heat
From: Cecchini, Ron
This is possibly the creepiest show about God I have ever seen.
Imagine The X-Files, Profiler and Touched by an Angel all crashing
into each other on the Highway to Heaven and this is what you get:
a mystery drama in which the cases being cracked aren't murders --
they're miracles.
Adrian Pasdar, who is always good as the quirky demihunk (remember
Fox's ill-fated Profit?), does it again as Declan Dunn, a disheveled,
though impossibly charming, anthropology professor hellbent on exposing
supernatural events as downright righteous acts of a higher power.
His obsession harkens back to this horrible mishap from his days as a
boozehound, when he was plucked from the jaws of death after getting
trapped in an avalanche. Jolted sober by this divine intervention,
Declan is now using his second chance to prove God's hand in unnatural
phenomena.
In tonight's opener, he makes a freaky find after a young boy is saved
from drowning in a frozen lake by what Declan believes may be a saintly
apparition. Teaming with Peggy Fowler (Rae Dawn Chong, looking lovely),
a nay-saying shrink with some pretty heavy God issues, Declan digs into
the accident like it's the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.
What he comes up with isn't exactly of Biblical proportions, but the
finale does have a certain chill factor that left this viewer suitably
converted to the mysterious ways of this new series.
Pasdar and Chong make a nice Mulder-Scully team (only with more humor
and better bone structure) and the show is smart enough to provide
explanations involving natural phenomena for some of these so-called
"unexplainable" situations. Now, if someone would explain to me why,
after a six-episode introductory run on NBC, the show is jumping to a
permanent perch on the Pax network (in which NBC has a stake). This
is the kind of drama that could have been the saving grace of NBC's now
defunct "Saturday Night Thrillogy." It also might possibly have given
the underappreciated Pasdar the career he deserves. A leap to the
fledgling Pax may limit this show's potential. In fact, it may take
a miracle to keep it alive.