Title: Peacemakers: Series Premiere
Stars: Tom Berenger, Peter O’Meara,
and Amy Carlson
Writer: Rick Ramage
Producer: Trish Berenger
Co-Executive Producers: Rick Wallace
and Larry Carroll
Executive Producers: Charlie Craig and
Rick Ramage
Running Time: 65 minutes without
commercials
Media: USA Network Series Premiere (NTSC
VHS Screener)
Premiere: Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at
9pm (ET/PT)/Subsequent Episodes Will Air Wednesdays at 10pm (ET/PT)
Network: USA Network (Check your local
cable/satellite listings for channel)
TV Rating: Not Available At Time Of
Review
The western frontier of the United
States is being heavily industrialized and settled in the 1880s. Former Union
soldier and Civil War veteran turned Federal Marshall Jared Stone (Tom Berenger)
is a first hand witness to the changes that modernization has bought to his town
of Silver City. In law enforcement, the advent of fingerprinting, photography,
and other forensic techniques and scientific tools such as the microscope has
changed the very manner in which suspects are apprehended and convicted. When a
wealthy land baron is discovered murdered, the man caught at the scene of the
crime is automatically arrested and faces the possibility of being hanged for
murder, however when cocky forensics scientist Larimer Finch (Peter O’Meara)
arrives sporting credentials and techniques at deduction from Yale and Scotland
Yard, Marshall Stone and Detective Finch form an almost poetic alliance that
combines new fangled forensic techniques and old fashioned frontier crime
fighting. With the assistance of a strong willed medical student (Amy Carlson),
who has returned home to run the family undertaking business, the trio take
their first steps at bringing western crime scene investigation into the 20th
century.
“Peacemakers” is an intriguing show
that is hard to define. It is not quite a western, but it is also not quite a
crime solving or murder mystery show although it contains elements of all three
genres and more. The success of the series will depend in part in how
imaginative the Writers and Producers can develop scripts that capture the
imagination of the viewers. The show cannot go too far into the realm of the
fantastic because then we would have “Wild, Wild West” so it needs to grab
the imagination the way the hit CBS series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”
captured the imaginations of viewers by delivering a series where the cops were
not so much the stars as was the science behind their investigations. Thus the
challenge here is likely to be how do we present a show that presents how the
basic elements of science would develop into modern crime scene investigation?
If the western was where American mythology began, then the police show is the
modern representation of that mythology on television in part depending on how
realistic the show is presented. So I hope this series will find it’s step
walking the narrow rope between inspired reality and fantasy.
As it is, I definitely think the series
shows a lot of potential. I just think it needs to develop the world in a way
that creates an ongoing suspense and takes real chances because otherwise it
just will not standout enough. One element that was not integrated well enough
into the series premiere is a subplot involving a man who the Marshall
court-martialed back during the war. While the presence of this character
enables the viewer to learn a bit more about the background of Berenger’s
Marshall Stone character and even enables the Writers and Producers to do some
cross cutting of action that reveals that both the detective and the Marshall
can behave opposite as to what one might expect, it just feels tacked on and not
an important part of the story as a whole.
That aside, “Peacemakers” is a
promising series that must resist cliché and capture the imagination through
the way stories of the past that employed scientific possibilities of the future
grabbed readers, but at the same time “Peacemakers” must stay firmly
grounded in the harsh realities of frontier life and that means that not every
case can be solved and sometimes the best intentions only make situations worse.
The series premiere of
“Peacemakers” will air on the USA Network from 9PM to 10:30PM (ET/PT) on
Wednesday, July 30th, 2003 with subsequent episodes airing each
Wednesday following from 10PM to 11PM (ET/PT) on USA.
© Copyright 2003 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.