Meadowlands

, a New Showtime Dramatic Series (2007)

Starting Sunday June 17th, 10pm ET/PT on Showtime
Starring: David Morrissey, Lucy Cohu, Felicity Jones, Harry Treadaway, Ralph
Brown, Nina Sosanya
website

meadowlands

Meadowlands is the quintessential paranoid fantasy of a suburb...a community
that appears to be safe, bucolic and picturesque, but actually has a
sinister, threatening inner core.

As the series begins, Danny (David Morrissey) and Evelyn (Lucy Cohu) Brogan
and their teenage twins (Felicity Jones and Harry Treadaway) have entered a
witness protection program and have been moved to the town of Meadowlands.

It gradually becomes clear that all the inhabitants of Meadowlands are in
witness protection escaping their secret criminal pasts. And it appears
that they are all condemned to remain in Meadowlands out of fear of
retribution by the outside world.

But of course, the residents can't change their past and their basic nature.
As a result, no one in Meadowlands is who he appears to be. And more
importantly, there isn't one character in Meadowlands who is sympathetic,
appealing or mentally healthy.

Filmed in Maidstone, in the English county of Kent, by Ecosse Films, and
with an all English cast, Meadowlands is a very slick production. It's all
about the mysterious undercurrents of evil that permeate the atmosphere of
the town, but Meadowlands has no heart.

And at least from the pilot episode, Meadowlands doesn't have much of a plot
either. We are introduced to the Brogan family and to a series of their
bizarre, unbalanced and evil neighbors. I chose not to see any other
episodes. But some fans of psychological thrillers of the Twin Peaks genre
might find Meadowlands more engaging.

So the premise for Meadowlands is Sartre's No Exit ("Hell is other people.")
but unfortunately, the pacing of the show is more like Beckett's Waiting for
Godot.

Emily S. Mendel