Tuesday, October 15, 2013

October Horror 2013: 15 - Harper's Island


We started watching Harper's Island quite some time ago, maybe even over a year.  Harper's Island aired for 1 season in 2009 on CBS.  It's rare to see a TV show that aims to tell a single coherent story without aims for a second season.  So we've seen most of the episodes, for the October watching season we watched late-season episodes Seep and Snap.

So we've got a mystery-thriller TV show starring Christopher Gorham and Elaine Cassidy among ~23 other characters and partial-season guest stars.  The story is set in a small island community, to which Henry Dunn and his fiancĂ©e Trish Wellington return for their wedding.  In each episode between 1 and 5 characters die.  For the majority of the show the killings are taking place in secret and the wedding part is not aware of them, until the climactic and very public murder of Richard Burgi's Thomas Wellington.  Each episode is an onomatopoeic hint based on how victims die in each episode.

The setup of the show was initially interesting based on setting up all the characters and resurrecting old tensions as people who grew up in an insulated community, but left for greener pastures suddenly come back.  There's some initial interest, also, in the sub-plot of the murder of Abby (Elaine)'s mother by John Wakefield many years before, but they harp on it so much it gets old and begins to feel like an obvious red herring.  I haven't finished the show and also remain unspoiled, so I don't know if it is.

Aside from the mystery, if you're invested, there isn't much to hold interest and the show is in a weird situation where it's best to watch in a marathon, but too long to watch in a marathon.  There are so many characters it's hard to keep the plot in mind as time passes between episodes and there's no recap.  It's still well made and fun, so if you like the idea of murder-mystery over an entire season of TV, check it out.

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