Timeless (2016)

This is a TV show in an admirably old-fashioned sense of the word, with a tight, action-packed pilot episode that is casually fun and intriguingly executed. There’s also a thought-provoking science-fiction premise that doesn’t clumsily reach for the profoundly metaphorical.

Tthe most promising aspect of the series is the challenges it could provide to its cast, if the writing continues to sharpen.

NBC’s new show about cops and criminals who zap between the present and the past itself zips along with the merciless efficiency of, well, an expertly made network procedural. Which gives rise to plenty of eye-roll-worthy moments--but also allows the show to successfully deliver the philosophical sugar rush that has made time travel one of the most persistent fiction narratives in history.

Even with Barrett and Spencer's characters there to remind us that the good old days weren't good for everyone, and the hint of some overarching conspiracy, there's a romance to Timeless that so far makes it worth the trip.

Timeless is not serious, thoughtful TV. But it is well-produced, escapist fun that gives each of the lead characters some story engine baggage, especially the show’s lead, Lucy.

It’s smart enough to make the mechanics and facts of its premise just plausible enough, but its real interest of exploration are the details that are relevant to the audience--what it is like for us, with our current values and awareness, to enter into times that are so far removed from where we are now.

Even if the vibe on the whole is very retro (the show could air in the '80s and '90s, and the only notable change would be more primitive special effects-- but in the moment, the most compelling parts are about how the missions impact the characters personally, whether through the people they meet in the past, or the way their actions alter the present.

The pilot’s finale asks more questions than it answers, including who’s good and who’s up to no good in the scheme of things. The show probably would work better an hour earlier, but wherever NBC puts it, it’s worth finding.

At the outset the pilot is a fun and adventurous romp without ever feeling campy or overdone. ... Where the plot gets bogged down is in the overall mysteries introduced in the pilot, namely those surrounding the Lucy character.

Timeless is a mostly straight-faced, frequently corny, occasionally high-minded adventure thriller--pulp that stops every once in a while to reflect on the dark marks of American history or consider its characters' deeper feelings and predicaments. Yet it works best when it remembers that there’s something inherently nutty in the whole business, when it does not deny its inner “Back to the Future.”

Timeless isn’t good, exactly, but in the experienced hands of Mr. Kripke and Mr. Ryan it combines enough goodish elements to be enjoyable.

Approach Timeless as throwback, somewhat in the vein of a less nuanced Quantum Leap, and it can be enjoyed. But be prepared to turn your brain on and off at random intervals and don't yank too hard at any of the plausibility strings, or I fear Timeless will unravel entirely.

Any potentially thorny issue get pushed aside by excess mythology. [7 Oct 2016, p.50]

If you dwell on time-travel paradoxes too much, you’ll go mad, and that advice holds for this show: Come for the ride, enjoy the appealing cast and the sheer adventure.

It is merely OK--not quite tricky enough to satisfy the hard-core geeks, not quite mindless enough to satisfy someone who just wants to watch the tube and forget a long day. But it is tricky, with at least one interesting twist.

From the network that brought you Quantum Leap, it’s NBC’s Timeless, which can be far-fetched even for a show of this genre. But it’s also agreeably fast-paced and a good deal of fun before jumping through another hoop at the end that might make the present an almost equally wild mini-ride.

Watching Timeless won't endanger your past or present, most likely, and it might even be a pleasant escape from the history we're currently living.

The problem is that these opening outings feel too much like they’re cramming in all the time-travel basics--establishing the rules (no do-overs), explaining the risks, posing a variation on the old “Would you kill Hitler” question.

Timeless works in a lot of timely commentary via the characters of Rufus and Lucy, who in earlier eras, as a black man and woman, are not treated well. Having made such sociopolitical points, the series is also free to become a potboiler adventure, with a lot of frantic searches for both historical figures who need protecting, and for Flynn, who’s out to cause mayhem.

For better or worse, and in this case mostly better, the show works.

After two episodes, the resulting impression is ambivalence. Without anything strong to latch onto, Timeless is adrift in a sea of medium feels, none pressing enough to justify continuing the journey. Well, none but Abigail Spencer.

A wildly uneven action-adventure-fantasy drama from executive producers Eric Kripke ("Revolution," "Supernatural") and Shawn Ryan ("The Shield," "The Unit"), it awkwardly follows a scientist, a soldier and a history professor pursuing the mysterious criminal who stole a secret time machine.

It's not great, but it's not bad.

It wants to be a stupid time travel show about people chasing a bad guy into the past to preserve American history. And on that level, I think it succeeds!

Timeless shouldn’t be quite so efficient at answering its own riddles, not if it wants to maintain viewer interest. Unfortunately, the procedural aspect of the show necessitates such expediency. Ryan’s previous work in the genre managed to soar above the rest of its offerings, but here it just bogs down the headier sci-fi themes.

Timeless is quite funny, sometimes intentionally.

The show (or the pilot, at least) falls quickly into the problem of taking an arrogant look back at the follies of a (as portrayed) quaintly ignorant past.