Zero Hour a thrill ride
If Robert Ludlum thrillers rank high on your list of recreational reading material, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Zero Hour, a rollicking 13-week thrill-ride that begins tonight with a flashback to Germany in 1938. Advance reviews have drawn parallels between Zero Hour and The Da Vinci Code, and there are similarities.
When Zero Hour’s story jumps to present day from 1930s Germany, for example, the story — about a reluctant Everyman drawn into a labyrinthine conspiracy involving secretive priests, ancient scrolls and a seemingly indestructible, silver-haired assassin — is reminiscent of Dan Brown’s thriller about an Everyman on the trail of the Holy Grail and a murderous albino monk.
As Zero Hour’s mystery becomes more clear, though — and the producers have promised a reveal at the end of each weekly episode — it begins to look, sound and feel more like one of Ludlum’s early novels about neoNazis, Nazi sympathizers and real, actual Nazis left over from the bad old days, railing away in embittered old age at the sorry state of present-day affairs and how the Master Race has gone, well, to hell in a hand basket.
The hero, alternative-magazine publisher Hank Galliston, is played with a believable empathy by Anthony Edwards, who played one of TV’s most beloved characters, Dr. Mark Greene, in ER back in the second golden age of network TV dramas, when ER and The West Wing were winning Emmys at the same time.
Galliston is the editor of Modern Skeptic, an alt monthly that debunks myths and exposes conspiracy theories as frauds. When Galliston’s wife, played by Jacinda Barrett, is kidnapped one day from the antique clock shop she manages, Galliston finds himself drawn into a conspiracy that shows every sign of being real, despite his initial skepticism.
Despite its silly moments, Zero Hour is refreshingly spry and brisk. Edwards is convincing as the good-hearted, well-meaning schlub whose sole concern is getting his wife back alive and unharmed. And the producers are smart enough not to keep the viewer guessing down an endless series of blind alleys and rabbit holes.
Writer-producer Paul Scheuring, a featured speaker at the Banff Television Festival a number of years back, has promised that Zero Hour has a proper ending and won’t leave viewers hanging. Scheuring says he came up with the ending first, then worked his way back from there. Zero Hour isn’t one of these TV thrillers that will lead nowhere, in other words. (ABC, Global — 9 p.m.)