Geeks and Freaks
Eureka: The playground of mad scientists
The tucked-away town of Eureka may not be on a map, but you can't miss it. Just turn left at the second wormhole.
What's strange is commonplace in Eureka (Tuesdays at 9 pm/ET on Sci Fi, premiering July 18), a divertingly original but awfully precious comic fantasy that brings science fiction back to Earth. The setting: a quirky Northern Exposure-like burg in the Pacific Northwest where every basement seems to be hatching a mind-blowing (and potentially cosmos-shaking) experiment, courtesy of a local population of obsessed geniuses.
Many of the classified secrets behind the town's origins are revealed in this week's two-hour pilot, in which U.S. Marshal Jack Carter (gangly, goofily charming Colin Ferguson) stumbles into Eureka just as a secret project goes awry and begins peppering the community with quantum anomalies, leaving properties ruined and cows sliced in two.
"Doesn't anyone do anything halfway around here?" Carter wonders as he surveys the landscape of brilliant eccentrics, including a mechanic (Joe Morton) who used to be a space- shuttle engineer and a seductive innkeeper (Debrah Farentino) who doubles as a shrink with a top-secret clientele.
Part of the fun of Eureka comes in watching Carter settle in to a place where the fantastic is taken for granted, where Matt Frewer (Max Headroom!) is a militaristic dog-catcher, and the diner has a literally limitless menu. So far, the show is more likable than memorable, but there are worse places to spend a midsummer's night.
A Star in Focus
Far from a typical Hollywood biography, Marilyn Monroe: Still Life (PBS, Wednesday, July 19) is a thoughtful meditation on the sex symbol's legacy of agelessly iconic photographs. This American Masters documentary is fascinating but as frustratingly elusive as its subject. It argues convincingly that the vulnerable, sensual Monroe revealed herself more fully as a model — seducing the camera (and often the photographers) — than she ever did as a movie actress.
Eyes Wide Shut
"I don't do dumb," says Angela Henson (beautiful but robotic Abigail Spencer), the fearless FBI heroine of Lifetime's painfully derivative Angela's Eyes (Sundays at 10 pm/ET). It would be nice if she did interesting. About a minute in, we learn she has "a gift for spotting liars," honed by a painful family history: Her parents are traitorous undercover spies. (Alias, anyone?) Testy and bitter, she seeks out fibs in everyone from suspects to dates. If I told her I actually liked this drab drama, think she'd know I was lying?
