In the spirit of full disclosure, and just because I am simply lazy, this review also appears as a general posting on a message thread on the show's IMDb page...
I personally liked the show. I actually saw it on re-runs on Space (the Canadian counterpart to SyFy) and not during the original airing of the show. It struck me that this new incarnation of "Night Stalker" was a show very much in the vein of "Millenium", a wonderful, wonderful show created by Chris Carter and starring the talented Lance Henriksen. It had that same brooding, dark and suspenseful atmosphere, but more than that it also had almost the same substance and heart as that show. Style was never, at least in my mind, put over substance. Of course as others have pointed it also shared certain similarities with "X-Files".
It is true, that it was quite dark for a prime-time, network TV series, and liking it might have been an acquired taste...but the contention that this show was overly pessimistic, hopeless and depressing, is in my mind, unfair and unwarranted. The show only aired six episodes before it was cancelled and never got the chance to establish itself, evolve and show its true potential. We will never know what would and could have been. On the DVD set Frank Spotnitz does hint at and discusses what the future had in store for the characters and their respective story lines as well as the over all theme of the show, Good VS. Evil.
Stuart Townsend and Gabrielle Union were excellent together as was the rest of the cast. The stories in each episode were crafted as stand-alone narratives, but they also neatly fitted into the overall arch of the show and Kolchak's one-man crusade to find out the truth about what happened to his wife as well as expose all the strange cases he came across, trying to understand the nature of the dark, the evil, the things that go-bump in the night, which most of us ignore and pretend don't exist.
The more I think about it, the more I see "Night Stalker" if not parallel to, at least mirror other similar shows like HBO's "Carnivale" and CW's "Supernatural". But "Millennium" remains the show most comparable to "Night Stalker".
Lastly I have to add, that the narration which Stuart Townsend did at the beginning/intro and end/outro of each episode was quite wonderfully chilling and gave me goosebumps each and every time, and I mean this as the highest compliment. That world-weary voice Carl Kolchak brought every week, heavily burdened by the knowledge and awareness of the darkness and evil which lurk out there, made this show a must-see! Too bad it didn't get a fair shake...
I personally liked the show. I actually saw it on re-runs on Space (the Canadian counterpart to SyFy) and not during the original airing of the show. It struck me that this new incarnation of "Night Stalker" was a show very much in the vein of "Millenium", a wonderful, wonderful show created by Chris Carter and starring the talented Lance Henriksen. It had that same brooding, dark and suspenseful atmosphere, but more than that it also had almost the same substance and heart as that show. Style was never, at least in my mind, put over substance. Of course as others have pointed it also shared certain similarities with "X-Files".
It is true, that it was quite dark for a prime-time, network TV series, and liking it might have been an acquired taste...but the contention that this show was overly pessimistic, hopeless and depressing, is in my mind, unfair and unwarranted. The show only aired six episodes before it was cancelled and never got the chance to establish itself, evolve and show its true potential. We will never know what would and could have been. On the DVD set Frank Spotnitz does hint at and discusses what the future had in store for the characters and their respective story lines as well as the over all theme of the show, Good VS. Evil.
Stuart Townsend and Gabrielle Union were excellent together as was the rest of the cast. The stories in each episode were crafted as stand-alone narratives, but they also neatly fitted into the overall arch of the show and Kolchak's one-man crusade to find out the truth about what happened to his wife as well as expose all the strange cases he came across, trying to understand the nature of the dark, the evil, the things that go-bump in the night, which most of us ignore and pretend don't exist.
The more I think about it, the more I see "Night Stalker" if not parallel to, at least mirror other similar shows like HBO's "Carnivale" and CW's "Supernatural". But "Millennium" remains the show most comparable to "Night Stalker".
Lastly I have to add, that the narration which Stuart Townsend did at the beginning/intro and end/outro of each episode was quite wonderfully chilling and gave me goosebumps each and every time, and I mean this as the highest compliment. That world-weary voice Carl Kolchak brought every week, heavily burdened by the knowledge and awareness of the darkness and evil which lurk out there, made this show a must-see! Too bad it didn't get a fair shake...