Stars:Â James Nesbitt, Stephen Hagan, Joseph Gatt
Harry is a Detective for the London Police, and a compulsive gambler, his career and compulsion come head to head when an underworld figure calls in the massive debt that Harry owes it sets off a chain of events. This is further complicated when Harry is given a bracelet that endows him with unbelievable luck.
James Nesbitt, from the Hobbit movies, and from the now forgotten Jekyll one season masterpiece, stars as Harry. The one night stand that leaves him free of his debt and stuck with the bracelet on his wrist means his good luck forces bad luck on someone else. The show is created, or to be honest, co-created by Stan Lee, and aims to capitalise on the name of the man who created all the great comic characters that we’re enjoying on the big screen. The question is that with some of the cream of British television stars on board, Stan Lee’s input, and the London backdrop has this show got the legs to give us something memorable?
I’m really not sure. This is just the first episode and it’s hard to make a judgement on the entire series from 44 minutes. But here is something that I do know. They are managing to bring out the very human side to the fantasy aspect of this show. It’s a little far fetched, but again fantasy show, so I decided to switch off the part of my brain that will find every plot hole in an episode and turned to 11 the part of my mind that just wants to be entertained. Once you just want to be entertained you are fine. The performances are TV cop drama performances in this first episode, which you can’t complain about as very little remarkable happens other than a massive amount of character development. There are moments of dated sound effects that you are just waiting for and I guess will wait for in future parts of this series, and when I say dated they remind me of moments from the Wonder Woman TV show and other shows from around that time.
Introducing a murder mystery into the fray gives another element of a deeper story that I’m sure is going to come into play as the 10 episodes come out. The script though is a little bit stilted and dated, with some cliché lines making you smirk, knowing that that character was going to say that line. London looks amazing here, almost like a postcard of the city, or a tourist video capture, and it works. Though the city looks amazing it does the show a disservice when it comes to the parts of the show that are meant to be gritty cop drama.  It almost doesn’t feel real enough. The part of the story dealing with The Bracelet is going to have to be explored more through the series, very little is given away here in episode one, rightly so, and I can that a lot of people may be discouraged from watching the future episodes in the series, thinking that they are all going to be like this one. This serves as just a taster, and Uncle Gar is hoping that he’s right. I hope that this is just character building, a good foundation, on which to build a far more solid structure. If it turns out that this is just something that Stan the Man came up with and got paid a fortune it won’t effect him that much, at 93 years old I doubt this is going to set him back, but it will change our perception of him a little. The man is the reason why I write comics, his attitude is the reason I stay positive and soldier on writing my indie comics, I just don’t want this TV show to be a comical footnote in his career. If this is the last thing that he creates, or co-creates, while still on our beautiful planet, I want it to be something that I can share with the generations that will come after me.
So watch this, if you start then see it through, I hope I’m right for everyone’s sake that this will be at the very least an entertaining show. If not we’ll all just try to forget about it as quickly as we can, and with the upcoming Superhero slate of TV and film, we’ll have something new to wipe our tears away with. Luck is nothing without the ability to carry the work through.
[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
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