Cross

The James Patterson novels were some of my favorite and to me Aldis Hodge is a perfect Alex Cross. Always liked his character on Leverage, but this role shows another range of his acting chops. Can't go further without saying Ryan Eggold plays a perfectly evil villain. Their interaction at his birthday party was gold. The storyline moves along to reveal surprises and unexpected relationships. My kind of slow burn. I will agree with another commenter that the editing needs to lighten up the scenes. Way too dark and detracts from the viewing. Character development is strong and it's easy to buy in to the friendships and family dynamics. Hope they plan on making this a regular series.

I started following Aldis Hodge's career when I fell in love with his character in Leverage. His performance as "hacker" Hardison was superb, and I am totally buying his performance as Alex Cross as well. The writing is strong, the performances are excellent all around, and the directing and editing are top-notch. Here is my problem...

The lighting stinks.

I don't know anybody who lives every moment of their indoor life in such darkness. I am only 40 minutes into the first episode, but I already struggle to see details of many scenes. In particular, three scenes stand out. First was the cocktail lounge. I don't frequent cocktail lounges and bars myself, but even the darkest restaurant I ever visited had enough lighting that I could see the faces of the other people at the table. Second was the bad guy's lair. Would anybody working on detailed plans and projects really do it in such dim lighting? Certainly a perfectionist would want to see clearly everything he or she is doing. Third, is the house Alex shows up at for dinner. This is not a romantic dinner for two. It is a gathering of family and friends. The whole house is dark - the entry hall, the living room, and the dining room. Plus, every room in the police building is dark. Would a forensic expert not have a very well-lit operating room?

Why so dark? If they are trying to set a mood, I am more focused on struggling to see than I am on plot and dialogue.

This is a choice made by a lot of shows in recent years. You know, anybody with failing vision would simply not be able to watch this. Certainly my Father could not.

That being said, I could be wrong about the reason for the darkness. I stopped watching "How I Met your Father" on a different streaming service because it also was so dark it was not enjoyable. A little digging on the internet revealed that the problem was with the service, not the show. When the show aired on the network, the lighting was just fine.

Even though I've never read any of the source material from the James Patterson books, I've still heard of Alex Cross long before this tv show was in production. It's definitely something that I knew I would like and did...a lot. Aldis Hodge is an up and coming and underrated actor and he absolutely kills it as Alex Cross. The series follow Cross, who's a decorated D. C. homicide detective and forensic psychologist. He studies the victims to better understand who murdered them. Here he tracks a serial killer with his partner, John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa) that also has ties to his past. Besides being a detective he's also a family man and he's dedicated to being great at both. The best thing that this show has going for it is it's never boring. That's the very least you want from a show, to be invested in the story and never be bored. Cross does that.

To start with, it's a good, solid, serial-killer show. So I've got that out of the way.

However, I think it's the poor cousin to the UK's Luther with Idris Elba. Both he and Cross are billed as having extraordinary psychological analysis skills. With Luther you get that. With Cross you don't. There are only two times in 8 episodes where he does the whole "Spideysense" thing and gives an analysis that others just don't see.

Then there's the inconsequential acting from some of the big part actors. Their scenes just don't do justice to the great acting of the main characters.

And the last point is Iasiah Mustafa. In this show he is the spit image of Andy Farrell, the Irish Rugby team coach. One's a black guy and the other's a white guy but, boy, the resemblance is uncanny!

Enjoyable show but I think Luther does it better.

Seriously, the plot and the show is great, but can somebody tell the video editing dude to turn the damn brightness up please. The show is SO dark, literal dark not metaphorically dark, that you can't see what in the heck is going on like 75% of the time. Don't you dare try to watch it in the day time. I really want this review to make it to the editor so they can do something about the lack of brightness. I feel like i've made my point not, but I have one hundred and twenty characters left minimum before I can post, so I'll keep on typing until I get there. Sorry for the inconvenience, almost there, there we are!