Hunters

Hunters offers up a clumsy start, to a series that, so far, fails to inspire.

The show taps into the shadow government organization hunting aliens stick. Its hardly original but that's OK. What's not OK is the poorly constructed storyline and characterizations.

Its story never really makes clear whats happening or why. You get vague pieces of information, combined with showy scenes of amongst other things, the done to death, alien autopsy. Perhaps this is intended to intrigue the viewer? The reality is, it simply confuses.

The characterizations are hardly impressive either. They feel flat and lifeless. There's no strong emotion, clarity of purpose or real connection built between the key characters. This includes those who are romantically involved. As a consequence the key players are, for the most part, rendered uninteresting and dismissable.

For myself, there is little to like here. I was genuinely bored by the first episode and doubt, I'll be taking this one any further. Three out of ten from me.

After watching the pilot for "Hunters", I was disappointed. Although it is not unusual for a show to start quickly, hoping to catch the interest of viewers from the start, that strategy is difficult to pull off, requiring clarity. The audience must know what is happening, even if it doesn't yet understand all the intentions of the characters. And viewers should be given a character (or two) they can identify with.

"Hunters" is a failure of style and story. The action is dark, full of shadows that obscure identities. This method can create mystery, but the viewer should at least know what the mystery is. When he is given little or no context, the first episode is only a collection of actions to be remembered, in hopes of later understanding.

The story seems implausible. There is a troubled FBI agent, Flynn (Nathan Phillips), who lives with a wife we barely see and a former partner's daughter who is also troubled. There is a shadow organization that tracks down undefined entities that belong to another shadow organization with unknown goals. For some reason, all of these entities converge, Flynn is told he now works for the first organization, and people start chasing each other.

Flynn receives no indoctrination or training. He is never read in regarding his new employer's objectives or its history. And neither are we.

Usually, good scripts don't have the characters explain everything that happens; they just show us. But some exposition through dialogue is necessary if a backstory is not provided through flashbacks.

Perhaps later episodes can clean up the mess that the pilot lays at viewers' feet. And maybe other viewers are willing to wait for the framework that is missing. Personally, I am not motivated to wait, particularly because none of the characters intrigue me.

In order to mix mystery and action, the show chooses a more militaristic approach to the usual premise. It doesn't provide much in terms of characters, although there might be slight potential here. For action itself, the camera is unsteady and the dark tone of cinematography doesn't help much. There's not much here that bring hook and creativity beyond the casual draw.

Flynn (Nathan Phillips) is an agent with difficult situation, wife missing and awkward step-daughter. The strange relationship with his wife's daughter can be appealing in mildly dysfunctional kind of way, but the acting doesn't create any spark. Flynn himself is the typical agent, while this secret organization lacks any appealing identity.

The pilot misses its chance for impressive introduction, something similar to MiB first initiation that really sets the tone. While it may be done to keep the mysticism, a series with organization at the core needs to establish itself well, yet Flynn is merely unceremoniously thrown in. The antagonist creature has a good design to it, the make-up does present something humanoid.

Graphic is occasionally too dark, which can be distracting. It tries to bring more authentic military look and the shaky visual might diminish the effort. The narrative doesn't pique much interest either, it might utilize the thriller aspect, yet even this is rather questionable as none of the characters can effectively draw audience to emotionally invest in the series.

"Hunters" manages to cover the basic sci-fi, but there's little drive to push the series further.

When something tries hard to emulate something else, but doesn't quite make it, it enters an area of psychology referred to as the "uncanny valley"; for example, a mannequin that is almost real, but not quite. When a person encounters something that takes them into the uncanny valley, it sets off an anxiety and makes them uncomfortable. This is why we don't make dummies that look too human-like, they put shoppers off.

"Hunters" lives firmly inside the uncanny valley. Virtually all of the actors are Australian. It's filmed in one of the most Australian of cities, Melbourne, inside Melbourne buildings and houses. They really try their best to put on American accents but outside of the veterans they often fail -- sometimes quite comically. Australia is not North America. Escalators are reversed. Vehicles have the steering wheels on the wrong side. The architecture is distinctly un-American. The list goes on.

It's a recipe for a perfect storm of distractions, and when the show itself is quite borderline in terms of plot, acting and editing the last thing you need is to then shove viewers out of what meager frame you have by shouting at them that this is "fake". At the very least the lead actors ought to have been North American. Maybe they could have anchored the rest of it but with all Aussies it's all at sea.

But apparently the theory that we live in a matrix of parallel universes is true. In my universe this was great science fiction.

I have no idea what the people who knocked this excellent adult sci- fi series were watching - And can't even imagine what they expected. Well they got what they wanted - canceled after 13 episodes.

There have been quite a few good alien invasion series over the years, especially in the late 1990s such as "First Wave", "Dark Skies", and "Earth Final Conflict"

Apparently somewhere between then and now - real aliens have taken over the planet Earth, dumbed down the Human mind, and made inane old style Westerns in a sci-fi format seem good, and intelligent sci-fi like Hunters not understandable to the average viewer.

So accept the truth - the aliens have taken over, watch your Firefly and the Expanse and all the exciting soap opera and drama that goes with it - And skip the really intelligent sci-fi like Hunters - the aliens have won and they will keep you dumbed down. so Don't worry be happy.