Aquarius

There's nothing egregiously wrong with Aquarius--it's sometimes dull but also at turns surprising--but with so many options for entertainment content today, this NBC procedural-serial hybrid doesn't do much to stand out.

Aquarius sets up several subplots that are nicely turned, and as ’60s pieces go, it’s hardly the worst. It just doesn’t quite make you feel you’re there.

Aquarius struggles with how to integrate the Manson family into the action without diminishing the evil still to come. It’s most successful when it sticks to the small details, like the squalid conditions of the Manson compound, or how touchy he could be about his rock-star dreams.

Beyond the rockin’ soundtrack, the flat storytelling has no pop.

Sheerly as a crime story, Aquarius goes down easy enough, but it lacks particularly fresh ideas either on its setting or its genre.

Too much about Aquarius is boilerplate cop-drama material; by the second episode, Shafe and Hodiak are investigating other cases while the Manson plot plays out over the long term.

The series works best when it stays clear of the issues and concentrates on individuals, acting as people do. (This was true of "Mad Men" too, after all.) The more strongly it indicates the era, the more it resembles an old episode of "Dragnet."

By starting the story so long before the deaths of Sharon Tate and Manson's other victims, though.... the next several episodes devote most of their time to the detectives investigating crimes that either tangentially involve Manson or have nothing at all to do with him, but are there to fulfill the Case of the Week structure most network procedural cop shows depend on.

Aquarius touches, not very subtly, on issues of race, gender and sexual preference while pursuing a story involving Manson that's complicated but not actually as compelling as some of the lesser subplots.

Aquarius is watchable, but oddly bland, given its subject matter. It’s not so much “Helter Skelter” as it is “The Long and Winding Road.”

Created by John McNamara, and representing some of his most ambitious work in years, Aquarius--which wisely draws heavily on the songs of the time--is big and messy, a much more direct hit on the mores of the time than something like “Mad Men.”

With feet of clay, Aquarius plods relentlessly toward a climax everyone already knows, while making just enough fictional detours to make the journey truly exasperating.

The show's strengths--Duchovny's smarm-tinted megacharm, a functional police procedural--don't seem like quite enough to make people desperate for another chapter.

Anthony makes for a charismatic maniac. It’s the thinness of the filmmaking and the unfocused narrative that frustrates.

Sometimes it works, and we do get to see the already languorous Mr. Duchonvy act like he’s on an acid trip. Much of the time, though, this show set in the era of LSD feels more like a dose of Thorazine.