Seven years ago on the titular isle, a man called John Wakefield murdered seven islanders and strung them up from the boughs of a tree, before he was killed by the local Sheriff (Jim Beaver), whose wife was amongst his victims. Sheriff Mills' traumatized daughter Abby (Elaine Cassidy) fled to L.A to escape the bad memories, but is now returning as the wedding guest of her childhood friend Henry Dunn (Christopher Gorham), who is due to marry the beautiful Trish (Katie Cassidy), daughter of millionaire Thomas Wellington (Richard Burgi).
It's a fun setup, as friends and family of the bride and groom gather on a ferry bound for the idyllic island with a sinister past, unaware that another killer (or perhaps the same killer?) is on the hunt for fresh victims, intending to pick the wedding party off "one by one". The tropes of this genre are ingrained in the public consciousness (we all grew up with Scooby Doo), so Harper's Island gets down to business fast and early: the first victim is Trish's cousin, who finds himself tied to the ferry's drive shaft wearing an oxygen mask, just as the vessel starts its engine and a propeller chops his head off, leaving a blood cloud in the harbour water...
The cast are fresh-faced and ridiculously attractive; each given a role, a brief backstory, a possible motive, or personality quirk to draw the finger of suspicion. Amongst the twenty-five guests arriving for the week of prenuptual festivities, we have: beautiful blonde bridesmaid Chloe Carter (Cameron Richardson) and her British boyfriend Cal Vandeusen (Adam Campbell), who at one point holds her head underwater in a pique of anger; handsome local fisherman C.J Thomason (Jimmy Mance) who's a dab hand as gutting sealife; the bride's saturnine father, who's against the wedding and arranges for his daughter's ex-boyfriend Hunter Jennings (Victor Webster) to try and changer her mind; the groom's black sheep brother J.D Dunn (Dean Chekvala) who starts a relationship with local outsider Kelly Seaver (Anna Mae Routledge); the Dunn brother's surrogate father "Uncle" Marty (Harry Hamlin), who locks horns with the bride's meddlesome dad; and many others...
"Whap" (each episode's title onomatopoeia for a prominent death scene) is largely successful at the difficult task of introducing so many characters and sketching their relationships. Inevitably a lot of the faces wash over you, or you find yourself unsure about how certain people are related, but the main cast were easily grasped and their backstories explained neatly. Sadly, there wasn't enough time to make us care about any of the victims in these opening episodes, but hopfully it won't be too long before characters we've come to know and love meet grizzly ends.
"Whap" and "Crackle" were both briskly paced and enjoyable, despite the fact each episode's writing was mostly on a par with a clichéd American soap opera. I prefer to consider the show a subversion of glossy daytime soaps, anyway; a Melrose Place wedding storyline rudely colliding with a serial-killer thriller. For that reason, I found myself relishing its soap-y silliness, as the promise of a gruesome death scene was never far away to redress the balance or keep your interest.
And the kills were commendably imaginative, ghastly, fun creations; the aforementioned propeller head slice, a reverend getting caught in a booby-trap and decapitated, someone falling through a broken plank in a rope bridge and having his body hacked off below the waist, and a girl falling into a pit and being set alight (the latter a possible nod to Silence Of The Lambs, what with the poor girl's tiny pooch left yapping at the hole's edge. All we needed was Buffalo Bill lowering tanning lotion down to her in a basket...)
Overall, Harper's Island feels like good fun, if flawed as a longrunning television series. Indeed, it was cancelled by CBS after completing its thirteen episode storyline, but I'm not complaining. What would they have done for next season? Thought up another reason for a spate of murders on the same island? Changed the title of the show and relocate for fresh bloodshed? Perhaps. But this strikes me as a self-contained idea that would lose its appeal if it continue for too long, so the decision to kill it off was probably a blessing in disguise. We're left with a completed story to enjoy (doing for TV horror what 24 did for TV thrillers?), which BBC Three are wisely showing in delicious double-bill chunks.
Important note: obviously, Harper's Island is extremely susceptible to being spoiled by those who have seen the whole series. If that's you, please refrain from mentioning plot developments (particularly future victims and the killer's identity), so British audiences can enjoy the show as intended. Failure to do so will result in you being immediately blacklisted and banned from commenting here -- forever. I like to think my readers are adult enough to comment responsibly, so this hopefully won't happen. Thank you.
6 September 2009
BBC Three/BBC HD, 9pm
written by: Ari Schlossberg (1.1) & Jeffrey Bell (1.2) directed by: Jon Turteltaub (1.1) & Sanford Bookstaver (1.2) starring: Elaine Cassidy (Abby Mills), Christopher Gorham (Henry W. Dunn), Katie Cassidy (Trish Wellington), Cameron Richardson (Chloe Carter), Adam Campbell (Cal Vandeusen), Richard Burgi (Thomas Wellington), Jim Beaver (Sheriff Charlie Mills), C.J Thomason (Jimmy Mance), Victor Webster (Hunter Jennings), Dean Chekvala (J.D Dunn), Matt Barr (Christopher "Sully" Sullivan), Harry Hamlin (Marty Dunn), Gina Holden (Shea Allen), David Lewis (Richard Allen), Cassandra Sawtell (Madison Allen), Claudette Mink (Katherine Wellington), Brandon Jay McLaren (Danny Brooks), Chris Gauthier (Malcolm Ross), Sean Rogerson (Joel Booth), Amber Borycki (Beth Barrington), Sarah Smyth (Lucy Daramour), Ben Cotton (Shane Pierce), Anna Mae Routledge (Kelly Seaver), Ali Liebert (Nikki Bolton), Beverly Elliott (Maggie Krell), Paul Stanley (Old Albert) & Tom Pickett (Cab Driver)
