TV Review: Revolution

 Chris Kneipp reviews the new offering from the creator of Supernatural.

In Australia, it sometimes takes the Free-To-Air TV channels a while to catch up with new series coming from the U.S. Revolution is the latest offering by Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural, and while the second season has begun playing in the States, Season One is only just coming soon to the Nine network here (To be fair the first season has been aired on pay TV and was just released on DVD this month).

So what’s it about? Imagine a world where everything that relies on electricity fails, like someone threw a giant “off” switch. Cars stop working, light’s go out and everything stops. That’s where we start in episode one, as all the machines and devices we take for granted becomes useless (Bad news if you’re in a car, worse if you’re in a plane). Flash forward fifteen years and the world is a very different place.   

I have to say, while the actor Billy Burke who plays Miles Matheson is given top billing, the real star of the show is Tracy Spiridakos. Her character, Charlotte “Charlie” Matheson, is Miles’ niece. When Charlie’s father is killed and brother is kidnapped, she sets off to find her uncle and get her brother back. Along the way, she finds that her parents had something to do with the blackout, and the slow revelation of their involvement is a central part of the story.

Like so many shows, (Lost springs to mind), flashbacks are used a lot to fill in the back-story and while it’s a little confusing at first, things start to make more sense by the end of the second episode. Through these flashbacks we see there was a massive civil war in America after the blackout, splitting the country into seven different nations. Everything has an American Civil War feel in the early episodes, from the uniforms of the militia to the sword fighting action scenes and I found this hard to relate to as a non U.S. citizen.

Most of the first season’s action takes place in the Munroe Republic, ruled over by a nasty piece of work, Bass Munroe, former best friend of Miles. Their friendship ended when Miles tried to assassinate him. (Note to self, not a good way to keep friends).

Once the story stops getting bogged down in the history and get’s on with the main story arc, it is quite enjoyable. Tracy Spiridakos does a great job playing Charlie and it is her story that really drives the plot forward. Her search for her brother becomes a search for answers and it is at this point the show finds its feet. Why did the power go out? How were her parents involved? And can the power be turned back on?

Billy Burke does a competent job in the role of Miles though he does the action scenes better than he does the emotional scenes in which he’s a bit wooden. I couldn’t help wondering if this was a hangover from playing Charlie Swan in the Twilght Saga.

The rest of the cast play their parts with varying degrees of success and David Lyons does Bass Munroe’s psycho paranoia very well.

I’m not sure what to make of this show and I think it’s a little bit hit and miss, but overall it has kept me watching. I’ll be keeping an eye out for Season Two, when it finally makes its way to Australia.