Harsh Realm

"X-Files" fans have been talking up this show, sight unseen, for months, based mainly on rumors and snippets from the set. But Harsh Realm may well validate all that hype. [8 Oct 1999, p.F1]

Harsh Realm doesn't just resonate, it shakes, rattles and rocks the brain. [8 Oct 1999, p.1E]

What's there is fascinating. More than perhaps anyone writing for TV, Carter understands the tactical value of withholding information; he gives us just enough to pique our interest and then pulls back, promising to deliver more when the time is right. The first installment of Harsh Realm promises plenty. [8 Oct 1999, p.71]

The early prognosis: bizarre, unsettling, perplexing, captivating. [6 Oct 1999, p.10]

Viewers who like Carter's government-conspiracy paranoia and his penchant for confusing plots will embrace Harsh Realm. It requires close attention to details that propel the story, and it has instantly likable characters in Hobbes (Scott Bairstow) and Mike Pinocchio (D.B. Sweeney). [8 Oct 1999, p.38]

Tonight's premiere looks a little bleak and proceeds a little predictably but this may well be due to the amount of exposition necessary to establish the world Carter and company will be exploring. [8 Oct 1999, p.144]

A neatly conceived show that borrows from sources like Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness" and George Orwell's "1984." The plot is hard to summarize thoroughly - you'd need an instruction manual for that - but it unfolds easily on screen. [8 Oct 1999, p.D12]

Harsh Realm looks to be capably acted and artfully creepy, but I'm not sure I care to get involved in another dark, paranoid drama from Chris Carter.

In its present ragged state, Harsh Realm is a jumble of great promise and great weaknesses - every bit as annoying as it is amazing. At its best, the series is stylish and clever. At its worst, well, things have a tendency to get pretty heavy-handed and obvious. [7 Oct 1999, p.1E]

Harsh Realm plays like a bald reworking of "The Matrix", complete with allusions to a coming savior, but without that film's exciting special effects or logical, unifying conceit. [8 Oct 1999, p.13E]

"Sleepwalkers," a short-lived NBC series from two seasons back, also asked viewers to care about characters who only dreamed that they were in peril. The sleepwalkers only drew a yawn from viewers, and it turned out that NBC programmers who thought the audience might actually care about such a situation were the ones who believed in fantasy. Fox may be repeating the delusion. [8 Oct 1999, p.E-10]

Chris Carter wants to hijack your brain. Again. And after shuddering through tonight's premiere of Harsh Realm on Fox, you may be ready to surrender.

Word of caution: The glum, occasionally promising Harsh Realm won't be for everyone. It's violent and often relentlessly bleak. [8 Oct 1999, p.1D]

The overall effect is dispiriting and off-putting. Maybe Mr. Carter knows where he's going with all this. It's doubtful, however, that many viewers will have the will to go with him. [8 Oct 1999, p.1C]

With time and understanding, maybe his Realm will prove a solid successor to "The X-Files," his earlier hit, but that's assuming that more than Carter's cultish core fans stick around long enough to make sense of this elaborate war game inside a super-secret government virtual-reality setup called Harsh Realm. [8 Oct 1999, p.55]

Unfortunately, the pilot doesn't flesh out the premise, making the episode little more than an average "Outer Limits." With all the special-effects possibilities of a virtual realm, "Santiago City" looks like the set of "Combat" with a high-tech fence around it. [8 Oct 1999, p.S34]

Having now seen it, I don't think I want to go there. [8 Oct 1999, p.H1]

It's an intriguing but emotionally sterile show, with flashy effects and flimsy characters.

The pilot exudes lots of flash (many things blow up, lots of gunfire) and little heart. The characters lack any spark of life and depth. [8 Oct 1999, p.40]

What's missing is a soul, a reason to care what happens to the characters. Carter also fails to give viewers enough critical insights to fully understand the complex premise.[8 Oct 1999, p.1E]

A violent, confusing and ultimately unsatisfying journey to the dark side. [8 Oct 1999, p.C08]

Carter's script and the direction of Daniel Sackheim (one of about 25 "executive producers") are riddled with hoary, snory contemporary cliches. Nothing amazes, nothing amuses, it all just goes bang and boom and clang in the night. This will be not just virtually but literally a better world if Harsh Realm has vamoosed by Christmas.

The thing that's really creepy about Harsh Realm is how predictable, superfluous, and gratuitously murky and convoluted all this intrigue seems. [8 Oct 1999, p.B55]