Human Target (TV show)

The only experience of the comic book version of Human Target I have is the Vertigo graphic novel Human Target: Final Cut, by Peter Milligan and Javier Pulido. This was a superb, sustained, beautifully illustrated piece.

Comparing it to the Human Target TV series is easy. Beyond the name of the main character and his occupation, there is little resemblance between the two. Perhaps because I have no strong attachment to the original concept, I find it easy to recommend the first season of the TV series as an entity of its own. In the currently ongoing second season, things get a bit more complicated.

The premise of the show is as follows:

Christopher Chance (Mark Valley) is an independent bodyguard for hire. He has a shady past as an assassin, for which he feels a need to atone for. Unlike the comic book, where Chance would disguise himself and take the place of the ‘target’ he was hired to protect, in the show he simply attaches himself and his few associates to their entourage and will use unconventional means of securing their safety.

So far so good. But that still sounds like just about every other weekly TV show or movie of the week. And generally speaking, this show does not feature great original scripts, spectacular acting, a particularly good musical score, or directors of discernible talent. All of the above elements are fine, perhaps slightly above average, but the peculiar thing is that it all somehow gels and the whole is greater than the individual parts.

Each episode is (with some wiggle room) like a mini action movie, set in entertaining locales using many familiar ideas and settings — one aboard an airplane, another in the South American jungles, third on top of a nearly inaccessible mountaintop monastery. What the show offers within its own comfort zone, is good old fashioned fun: spectacular stunts, humorous interaction by likable characters, and variety. This last bit is perhaps the most important thing in these days when most TV drama is so locked down in its own little plot structures, repeated week after week to mind-numbing number crunching soul sucking mediocrity. The show is not like X-Files, in that they would — during the best years of that show — capably shift tone from comedy to terror to action to tragedy (not too well on the last one, come to think of it) week after week with some invention. Human Target keeps the tone steady, just shifting from one action trope to another, with surprising agility.

Things get less interesting as the new season opens. At the time of the writing of this review, I’ve just seen the third episode of the re-scored and re-focused show, which has added new cast members and shifted its priorities in order to, I suspect, get new viewers. Most of this is to the detriment of the show. All three episodes are confined to a nondescript urban / suburban landscape. The new score is overbearing and unmemorable (I wasn’t too thrilled with the original one either, but at least it wasn’t used to boringly punctuate each word said on screen). The new cast members, both female, are fine, though the addition of new major characters sidetracks the focus of the show. The stunt work, major staple of the show from the beginning, remains superb.

Now whether Human Target can, after spending three episodes in getting viewers familiar with the new elements, regroup and integrate the best parts of both seasons to a good show that stands out amongst all the garbage remains to be seen. Whether the audiences will follow the show through these changes, remains to be seen. But I’m willing to give it a few more episodes to regain what was unique and entertaining about it to begin with. I need my weekly dose of well-made James Bond escapism.