The Whispers

Rabe is terrific, balancing drive and a mounting dread, and it’s a pleasure to see the actress commanding a lead role. The first three episodes build the mystery at a respectable clip.

Spielberg has always had a facility for casting children and a fondness for the supernatural. In The Whispers he also gets the adult mix right in a bracingly good and shivery serial drama with much to show and tell in the first three hours.

Some elements of the show are stronger than others. The ominous visual mood set by director Mark Romanek in the pilot is particularly striking and is helped along by the score, and the child actors do a good job of toeing the line between creepy and normal. The adults are less well-rounded, which, given the sometimes procedural nature of the plot, isn’t that surprising or that much of an obstacle to enjoying the show.

True, the series is marred by some very lazy writing.... Despite it all, this is seriously addictive stuff.

The central mystery still reaches to the Highest Levels of American Government, but it's a more intimate story, with fine performances by the three young children who start hearing voices, and more worryingly, taking direction from an unseen force.

Watching this invisible, unheard being manipulate children is unsettling, to be sure--but it also becomes perplexing, bordering on silly, in ways that writer Soo Hugh can't possibly intend. On the bright side, Rabe is excellent as the troubled heroine, with Sloane equally good as the equally troubled father and spouse.

The series, created by Soo Hugh and premiering Monday, has all the right pieces working together to make a decent show. It becomes slightly over-plotted by the third episode, but nothing that significantly diminishes its power to hold our interest.

Full of doe-eyed children talking to invisible and possibly sinister forces in the ceiling, the shrubbery and the night sky, The Whispers gets as much mileage out of the Steven Spielberg hand-stamp (he's an executive producer) as possible.

The more scenes there are between Rabe’s agent Claire Bennigan and her new partner, Jessup Rollins (Revolution’s Derek Webster), the better the show is.... It’s best whenever the Drill-chatting kids are onscreen, with young Kylie Rogers particularly skilled at being unnerving.

The Whispers has a polished feel, enough twists, and moves just well enough to steadily build on its central mystery. So for now, anyway, even if the kids aren’t all right, the show is.

The result is a series without a charismatic rooting interest, a narrative in which it’s much easier to root for the invisible Big Bad than it is for the nominal leads.

The show is no great shakes. The ostensible drama and tension rarely feel earned, and people's attitudes about child development seem under-informed. But as the show digs harder into its sci-fi elements (it's loosely based on a Ray Bradbury short story called "Zero Hour," in which children facilitate an alien invasion), and pushes into the whole global-mayhem option, it picks up a little juice.

None of this narrative padding is especially gripping, and some of it borders on dull, but the quality of the construction is above average.

The Whispers (created by Soo Hoo and claiming Steven Spielberg as an executive producer) is too slow and self-consciously creepy to hold my attention for long. Your response may vary.

It may demand more patience than it's worth.

The Whispers had the potential to be an intriguing, supernatural soap, but by episode two, it proves itself to be one of those series where the audience is, frustratingly, frequently one step ahead of the characters. That's not fun; it's boring, which is the last thing a supernatural thriller should be.

The Whispers is ultimately a frustratingly hollow experience, an assortment of familiar genre cliches and a stubborn insistence that its primary mystery will remain enticing for us even without hints or the gratification of answers that, in theory, would only elevate the stakes.

To its credit, The Whispers gets better by the end of the first episode. Unfortunately, it also shows signs of hurtling toward more complications than we need.

ABC has a house style, and this workmanlike execution of that style pretty much derails this drama. Many interior scenes are over-lit and thus not spooky, and there’s just a blandness in the casting and the production design that does nothing to help The Whispers build up the kind of mysterious atmosphere it needs to work.