Harper's Island.

I'm sort of obsessed with stories based on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (i.e. And Then There Were None). It's just an f'ing brilliant mind-screw to be in a group of people where someone is the killer, and you have to figure out who it is. The movie Clue is one of my all-time favorites. I still remember the Mathnet episode (Square One TV!) that took place during a mystery weekend (which I kinda nerdily want to take part in in real life). I suffered through the terrible (and racistly cast) movie Murder by Death. I trudged through a rancid adaptation of Christie's book that took place on an African safari for some reason. And I kinda even want to see Mindhunters even though I heard it was horrible and I've heard who the killer is.

So this summer, with the lack of decent TV (seriously, my list on the left has never been shorter!), I've let myself watch Harper's Island on CBS, which is about a wedding that takes place on an island and people die one-by-one. OMG, this show was awful--but I couldn't look away. (My doppelganger at EW who does what I do for free for a living agrees.) The story made no sense, and some characters just didn't act like how normal people should. And this island apparently has no inhabitants during a period of time when the weather doesn't seem all that bad. But the show didn't apologize for what it was, and it went about laying down red herrings left and right (that were so dumb, you knew that as soon as one was lain that you could count on that character dying in the next couple of episodes).

But it was cool that CBS went out on a limb for a mini-series/series hybrid--I hope they don't get scared off from this format. And, more importantly, I wish that someday some good writer, and some good director, would team up with some good actors to make an actually good adaptation of And Then There Were None.

A couple of nice surprises:

This dude:


Matt Barr played the would-be best man at the wedding that never was. He's got the presence and the likability to be leading man / star. The interwebs seems to be showing that most watchers of the show wished the most that he survived. He didn't.

And this girl:


Cameron Richardson, who I thought was a poor man's Emilie de Ravin (i.e. Claire on Lost -- whom I don't like on that show and whom I didn't like on Roswell -- so imagine my initial disdain for Cameron), had one of the most surprisingly nuanced performances on the show (that's not a back-handed compliment -- as bad as the story and the writing was, all of the actors were pretty solid).

Lastly, Christopher Gorham's work on the last episode was creepily great. I think the dude needs to eat a burger or five, but he should play darque more often.