Jul. 9th, 2016

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...Or is the question "Do I know how to not pick 'em?" Hmmm.

I digress...

Wa-a-ay back when, I caught an episode of space opera that turned out to be Firefly, but I (and about everyone else who liked it) could not find a reliable schedule of when episodes would be aired. The show was canceled.

Just recently, it seems, I started watching Forever, really loved the show, had an inkling of where the writers could take the idea, and then... the show was canceled.

And just recently, after seeing the title Houdini and Doyle on the program guide of our newly resurrected DirecTV service, I started watching the show, pretty much just in time to see the show's final episode just a few days ago, for it, too, had been canceled.

The premise of Houdini and Doyle is not entirely far-fetched, as it attempts to bring Harry Houdini (the famous magician who, in real life, didn't believe in psychics and that kind of stuff) together with Arthur Conan Doyle (the writer who gave us Sherlock Holmes and did very much believe in psychics and that kind of stuff). In real life, the men were friends, for a while, until Houdini's energetic debunking of spiritualism cost the men their friendship.

In the show, however, they are put in a position where they work together to help the police (shades of Elementary!) by investigating "strange" cases (shades of The X Files!), for which purpose London's first female police constable is assigned to escort them around.

One of the things that sort of bugged me about the story line was knowing what I do about Houdini (hey, you can't really work as a magician for any length of time in the area of Buffalo, New York, and not walk away knowing quite a bit about him), like the eventual loss of friendship with Doyle, like the fact that Houdini was married before the show's timeline starts (which, of course, does not preclude his romantic interest in the constable, but Bess—Houdini's wife—is never mentioned) and his mother, who dies during the show's timeline, actually died more than a decade after the show's timeline ends.

Ah, well. I'm sure the whole "first female constable at Scotland Yard" likely has something really wrong with it, but I simply haven't the cultural or historical knowledge to grok it.

Still, given the universe the series writers chose to create, the stories were entertaining and showed a progressive level of polish.

Cheers...

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