Television & Reality TV - Touching Evil on USA

nbsarah · 03-06-2004, 11:36 PM

Anyone seen previews for this? I already know it's going to be my new obsession.

jennarose · 03-07-2004, 11:00 AM

I haven't seen previews but I read about it in TV Guide and I'm planning to watch it.

Quote:

Who's the Madman?
Touching Evil's Hero is Touched in the Head
by Matt Roush, TV Guide

When Det. Susan Branca meets her bizarre new partner, she gripes about his "mental-health issues" as if that's a bad thing. Hasn't she seen Monk?

The success of that show hasn't been lost on USA Network, which looked to British TV for this much darker crime drama. Touching Evil, based on a series from Grenada TV that aired on PBS a few years ago, introduces a new unconventional crime solver: Det. David Creegan, back from a long medical leave after being shot in the head.

He was declared officially dead for about 10 minutes, and clinically insane later. Now he's a walking time bomb: emotionally volatile, prone to mood swings and uninhibited behavior. Creegan often seems dazed until he explosively shifts gears to confront his prey (a serial child abductor in the two-hour pilot).

As played with wry understatement by Jeffrey Donovan and Vera Farmiga, Creegan and Branca give off echoes of The X-Files' Mulder and Scully. He's the obsessed nut, and she's the "stabilizing force" assigned to keep him in line, irritated yet intrigued by his mad flights of intuition.

Together, they investigate the creepiest corners of warped humanity � wielding flashlights as they go. How very X-Files of them.

At times, Creegan acts like a bundle of quirks in search of a character. But compared to NBC's botched remake of Coupling, it seems Touching Evil has survived the overseas translation.

[ 03-07-2004: Message edited jennarose ]

nbsarah · 03-07-2004, 12:38 PM

here is the show's website.

I've seen many previews for it while watching Law and Order SVU or Monk.

ROCKSTAR · 03-07-2004, 08:16 PM

Ooooh, sounds good! Now I can't wait [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

jennarose · 03-09-2004, 09:56 PM

An article from the NY Times

Quote:

March 7, 2004
USA's Newest Oddball: A Hero Who Feels the Crime
By NEIL GENZLINGER

David Creegan faced difficult odds when it came to cracking the crowded lineup of television detectives. Then he had a stroke of good fortune: he was shot in the head.

Creegan is the fictional lead character in "Touching Evil," an offbeat, unsettling police drama that has its premiere on Friday. He works for the Organized and Serial Crime Unit, investigating nasty incidents in the San Francisco area, but these days mere grisliness is not enough to make an impression in television. That's where the gunshot to the head comes in.

It occurs in the opening minutes of the pilot: Creegan takes a bullet about an inch above his right eyebrow. When he comes to after brain surgery, he is a changed man: a strange and disquieting man, a man with a lot less inhibition and a lot more insight than most detectives.

"There are consequences to having a piece of your frontal lobe removed, and one of them is: no shame," said Jeffrey Donovan, the actor who was given the job of portraying the quirky Creegan and took it seriously enough to consult a neurologist about brain injuries. "I have no inhibition; I will just say whatever I feel. The other thing is sequential disorder. You put your pants on, you put your socks on, you put your shoes on; he would put his shoes on, his socks on, then his pants on."

Those kinds of oddities place Creegan in a class with USA's other not-quite-right crime solver, Adrian Monk, the obsessive-compulsive played by Tony Shalhoub. But "Touching Evil," unlike "Monk," will never be nominated for Emmys in the comedy categories. The crimes are ugly (in the pilot, children are kidnapped), and Creegan's tics are a vehicle for getting to the dark side of human nature: his mental instability enables him to see the world as criminals see it. And that, Mr. Donovan said, is what he hopes will set the show apart from television's many other police dramas.

The acting challenge has been invigorating, said Mr. Donovan, who until now has been best known as Jeffrey in the film "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2": "How do you play a detective who's supposed to keep himself removed from what's going on with the people who are creating these horrific crimes, yet he feels their pain?"

"Touching Evil" is based on a British series of the same name from the late 1990's, but Mr. Donovan's interpretation of the lead character is more complex and unpredictable than in the British version. Much of that comes from the script - the pilot is by Bruno Heller - and from the director, Allen Hughes. But some of what viewers will see, Mr. Donovan said, is his spontaneous contribution: for instance, a scene on an airplane where he begins tossing peanuts and crackers about, oblivious to what other passengers might think.

"Stuff like that was not in the script," Mr. Donovan said. "I kind of invented that. And God bless Allen Hughes and the network: they let me do anything I want."

Dealing with the inventiveness falls first and foremost to Vera Farmiga, who plays Creegan's reluctant partner, Susan Branca. Branca often finds herself apologizing for Creegan's odd behavior at crime scenes or trying to keep him from walking into onrushing traffic. But in this intricate series, Branca is her own kind of puzzle, which is just as Ms. Farmiga wants it.

"It's not just playing straight man to Creegan's loony," she said. "With Branca, what you see is not always what you get. There is a duplicity there. She has a very strong sense of her identity and purpose, and yet at times she verges on identity crisis. Branca has her turn in confronting her own demons."

Arnold Rifkin, one of the executive producers of "Touching Evil," first stumbled on the British version of the show when he was president of the William Morris Agency. He said he was so convinced of the show's potential for American audiences that when he resigned from William Morris in 1999, he sought to buy the rights, putting up his own money.

Later he and the actor Bruce Willis formed Cheyenne Enterprises and shopped "Touching Evil" to the major networks, but, Mr. Rifkin said, the response was always the same: "They thought it was too dark." Eventually Mr. Rifkin paid a call to USA, where executives were more receptive.

"'Dead Zone' was already on the air," Mr. Rifkin said, referring to the USA series about a man who emerges from a six-year coma with the power to see into the past and the future. "That's why it was the perfect network to go to."

In addition to the pilot, USA has ordered 11 one-hour episodes of "Touching Evil," which are now being filmed in British Columbia. In doing so it has acquired the ingredients for an exceedingly odd network party: imagine, gathered around the punch bowl, Adrian Monk, obsessively lining up the spoons; David Creegan, wearing his socks over his shoes; and Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) from "The Dead Zone," having a psychic vision worthy of a Stephen King novel, which is where that character began.

"It is interesting, though not necessarily by design, that shows that have resonated with us as programmers - and we hope with our audience - have been with imperfect heroes," said Jeff Wachtel, executive vice president for original programming at USA. "It seems that in a complicated world, we all understand more and more that the person who runs into the building to save your life may not actually be the most well-adjusted man or woman in the world. So the idea of heroes who have flaws, we find that works for us."

"Every good show, I think, is a metaphor for part of our experience," he continued. "There's a little bit of Monk in everyone." As for "Touching Evil," the exploration of how Creegan, Branca and their colleagues can immerse themselves in horrific crimes and still try to have home lives, love lives - perhaps that is not so different from the balancing act everyone has to negotiate between stress at work, domestic demands and personal needs.

Mr. Wachtel acknowledged that committing to a crime show when there were already so many good ones on the air gave the network pause. "When we got 'Touching Evil,' it was, 'Should we make this one?' - because it's a cop show," he said.

He and others figured that the way to keep it from becoming just another cop show was to proceed atypically. "And so almost every choice we made in shooting the pilot - from the director, Allen Hughes, to the unknown star, Jeff Donovan - was an unorthodox decision," he said.

Mr. Hughes and his twin brother, Albert, are known as film directors ("Dead Presidents," "Menace II Society") and had little experience in television before signing on as part of the producing team for "Touching Evil."

"We had looked at some cop dramas before, and they just all turned out to be cop dramas," said Allen Hughes, who ended up directing the pilot as well as being an executive producer. Usually, Mr. Hughes said, he is drawn to the secondary characters in the scripts he reads, but not this time. "This guy reminded me a lot of myself," he said of Creegan. "He marches to the beat of his own drummer, looking at things a different way."

"There was also the excitement of wanting to bring something different to TV as far as an energy, a pacing, a style of music that maybe goes to the subtext of the soul," Mr. Hughes continued. "TV traditionally doesn't use those tools, as far as telling a story and having patience and not cutting too fast and using actors to really go through the emotions and giving them time to really develop these emotions."

Mr. Wachtel said the payoff in choosing a film director was evident from the opening moments of the pilot. In these ominous, alluring few minutes, Creegan sustains the wound that underpins the whole series, and the tone for "Touching Evil" is set.

"If you look at the first five minutes of the pilot, you could write that scene: 'Cop drives up to house, cop walks through house, cop gets shot in the head,' " Mr. Wachtel said. "That's basically the only thing that happens. But Allen has this kind of filmic way to bring you into that scene that's just not normal; it's not the regular way to do it. And we're encouraging that."

ROCKSTAR · 03-10-2004, 12:39 PM

The show is getting more hype. I'm surprised I haven't heard of it before.

Good article!!

The Seannaholic Wench · 03-10-2004, 06:54 PM

I'm going to watch it. It looks pretty interesting. I've known about it for the last couple of months because Peter Wingfield's official site has been talking about it since he is in 3 episodes of it [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Dommie · 03-13-2004, 09:46 AM

Yesterday's pilot was interesting...but as the producer's and folks stated DARK. You could see by the ending that it wasn't going to be your typical - AND THE CRIMINAL WAS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE. But i didn't expect Creegan to go to the suspect's house once again without finding that missing clue that would have put him away...instead it ended unexpectedly.

Who is Peter Wingfield...is that Methos from Highlander fame? I was surprised to see the actor who played that character on my tv set once again. I use to love watching it during the Methos and Duncan days. I went to Highland thread and found out

who exactly is Peter Wingfield.

Liliya · 03-13-2004, 10:09 AM

I watched the premiere last night and I really liked it. The show seems different to me, and I was interested the whole time. I'll defintely be watching this show again next week.

~*Magical*~ · 03-13-2004, 10:12 PM

I just watched the premiere tonight. I really enjoyed it. I think I love Creegan. Just because of all his quirkyness. And some of my favorite parts were in the interogation room. How he opened it up and then asked if the guy took the 3 boys and when the guy said no, he's like "liar" and then ends the session. I was a little unsure of what the point was with him coming back. When he said he was "sent back". Will that come up again? Hopefully it is explained.

And how happy was I too that Peter Wingfield showed up. I loved Methos on The Highlander. So happy to see him in this show and hopefully he gets a bigger part.

Liliya · 03-13-2004, 10:17 PM

Quote:

I think I love Creegan.

Me too. Not only is he hot, but he's funny and smart. I really enjoyed him, and I really loved that he had no shame. That bought out some funny parts like him taking his shirt off in the airplane.

Quote:

I was a little unsure of what the point was with him coming back. When he said he was "sent back". Will that come up again? Hopefully it is explained.

I think he meant this as why he thinks he was brought back to life, to help people. Hopefully this is mentioned again.

The Seannaholic Wench · 03-14-2004, 12:04 AM

Yep...that is who Peter Wingfield played. He has been in several things since Highlander...a couple weeks ago he had a big guest spot on Andromeda, he also had a bit part in X2: X-Men United. He is has a part in the upcoming Catwoman movie too. There is also a new Highlander movie in works called Highlander: The Source. As well in a future of episode of Kingdom Hospital he will have a guest spot.

He has been on a lot of sci-fi based programs. (3 episodes of Stargate SG-1 for example) They show a lot of the reruns on the SciFi Network. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

So he is around still [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I am a fan of PW if you can't tell

I'll be watching Touching Evil for sure. It is interesting show I think.

~*Magical*~ · 03-14-2004, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by The Seannaholic Wench:
<STRONG>he also had a bit part in X2: X-Men United. </STRONG>

I remember hearing that he would be in that movie while it was being filmed. I was hoping he would play a new mutant and was disapointed when I learned he wasn't. Then I forgot he was going to be in it. But while I was watching it I got so happy to see him, even if it was such a small part.

Quote:

There is also a new Highlander movie in works called Highlander: The Source.

Really? [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] How far in the works is it? I'd definitly see that. I saw the latest movie that was made for it a couple of years ago. Though I'm still bitter that Richie was killed off like he was. [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img]

jennarose · 03-14-2004, 02:06 PM

Two hours is too long for me to sit still so I've only seen half of the premiere, but I like it so far. I'm going to try to finish the show later today.

bballplayer30 · 03-14-2004, 03:54 PM

I really liked the pilot. The show is definitely dark, but there's enough humor in it that it isn't depressing. I like the fact that when Creegan 'came back' he has no perception of shame or guilt, but he can still feel emotions like love and sadness, because it makes him more human. If he was just an unfeeling detective who showed no emotions, I don't think I would like the show as much because there would be nothing to relate to.

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