Time After Time

Logic isn’t a factor here, but the show is fun, rather evocative of ABC’s canceled “Forever” and the aforementioned “Timeless.”

This new Time After Time, charming and engaging, does the very best thing it could do: It respects (and doesn’t ruin) the movie.

The well-acted pilot is winningly old-fashioned, but the pull remains unclear. [24 Feb/3 Mar 2017, p.93]

With Time After Time he’s struck a balance between honest emotional resonance and salacious violence. Strangely enough, this combination makes this midseason series more charming and enjoyable than one would expect.

When Stevenson trawls a nightclub looking for a victim, it feels anything but fresh, and it’s suspenseful in the most mechanical way. It's the "Dawson's Creek" Williamson who’s the more valuable here; the romance and the comedy are what keep the series buoyant.

The first couple of hours are very entertaining. Which isn't surprising, given that the show is basically just cribbed from a very entertaining movie. The question is how this premise is going to hold up starting in Episode 2 (which was not screened for critics).

Time After Time is not an amateurish show; it’s actually quite polished.

This is supposed to be a cat-and-mouse game, but it's more like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

Time is an attempt to put a new twist on a conventional network-TV mystery series, and on its own minor terms, it largely works, The cast is attractive, the story is told with some wit, and the first hour, at least, moves along nicely. The main problem is one that haunts many such adaptations: The story still seems better suited to a movie (which it was) than a series.

Yet even with some elaborate new wrinkles, before it's over the launch betrays the inherent challenge in teasing out this sort of murderous cat-and-mouse game.

Time After Time has the opportunity to do something worthy of both of their light and dark legacies. Whether or not it does, only time will tell.

Stroma and Rodriguez have some sweet getting-to-know-you moments together while Bowman has presence as a menace run amuck. Still, by the end of Episode 2, a dull-edged redundancy is already starting to set in.

Like all time-travel shows, paradoxes can emerge like sinkholes. Still, the cast works so much charm, they must be exhausted by the end of the day.

The original movie worked because Wells was played as a man out of time and Steenburgen’s character longed for a gentleman while still wanting to be a modern woman. The new series doesn’t let that relationship ripen enough; so it ends up diving too quickly into violence and sci-fi fantasy to get its grounding.

It’s based on the 1979 novel and movie and is more romantic fluff than thriller.

ABC's Time After Time is a lock for this year's Emmy in the "Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Idiocy" category, being not only part of an insanely overworked genre but a remake of the 1979 film of the same name.

The science-fiction and thriller elements are routine, and Mr. Bowman doesn’t have the suave menace David Warner brought to the Ripper in the film. What does work is the cross-century romance between Wells and the woman he befriends.

It’s unclear if the series will rise above a constant cat-and-mouse game between Wells and Jack, something that seems like it could get old quick.

Time After Time is not nearly as compelling or creepy as it aims to be--it could use a smidgen of the fun that “Timeless” came by naturally.

It lacks urgency. One episode doesn’t represent an entire series, but as far as hooks go this one likes bite, and a winsome cast and pleasantly silly premise can’t make up for its shortcomings.

Time after Time is timeworn.

Time After Time is less utterly hollow than Williamson's CBS dud Stalker and slightly less literarily pretentious than Fox's The Following, but there remains an excess of uninterrogated slasher carnage.