Journeyman

The drama weighs down its hero with domestic crises and creepy glimpses into his past. The show misses its feel-good target.

An overly complicated pilot had me feeling that I, too, would like to time-travel, if not actually fast-forward, but a more straightforward second episode made me decide not to cancel my subscription just yet.

With its pleasing San Francisco locales and McKidd's sympathetic performance, "Journeyman" is entertaining enough.

The problem with reviving a time-travel show is there needs to be a really distinctive and appealing twist so that critics won’t just write things like, "This reminds me of "Quantum Leap.""

McKidd's a fine actor and there's promise here for an engaging romantic drama. But it's a bit too tangled, confusing and erratic in the opening weeks.

Time travel looked so cool and carefree in "Back to the Future" that you wonder why it seems to become so difficult and often downright unpleasant when TV characters try it. In the case of Dan Vassar, the time traveler in NBC's new Journeyman, it also gets unreasonably complicated for the viewer.

The dramatic structure is overorganized around the linear detective-ing, and the show's too Dan-centric without a "Quantum Leap"-like partner to spice things up.

It allows McKidd to shine as Mr. Fix-It, even though he never wanted the task. Some of the subtext needs more episodes to provide breathing room.

Once freed from the scaffolding and backstory constraints of a series premiere, Journeyman may find itself.

It's one thing when a TV show sets up a concrete mystery whose resolution you have faith will come, something like, "Who killed Mr. X?" But it's quite another when the show is so abstract that you aren't even sure what questions it asks. Kevin McKidd ("Rome") is an excellent actor, and it's only his skill that makes Journeyman tolerable.

The series follows the supernaturally themed "Heroes," but it is to its predecessor what a cookie made with Splenda might be to a mille-feuille. Journeyman just feels squeamish.