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Roswell High
bears
many similarities to another highly popular teen
fantasy series, as Keith Topping discovers when
investigating it's possible demise..
We all know the
scenario so well. It's a universal constant in
science fiction, isn't it?
You find a series
that you really like. You start to get interested
in the characters, investing time and emotional
attachment to them and their story. You look
forward to forthcoming developments and then, just
when you think that the future is in good hands and
that nothing can go wrong, a bit of horrid reality
shattered your little bubble universe and the
rumours start that you series days are numbered.
Typical. Most readers will, I'm sure, be able to
quote dozens of examples of bygone favourites that
have ended on the whim of a TV executive somewhere
who, frankly didn't understand the whole concept of
what the series was all about. And even if there
was only you and four of your mates watching it
well, what the hell, you liked it.
Television, being
the business of compromise that it is, we sometimes
have to take the rough with the smooth. True we
only got five years of Quantam Leap when another two or three
would have been nice. True, Dark Skies had far more potential
than it was ever allowed to display. True (and just
to prove that the principle is neither new nor
wholly confined to the US networks), there is no
way that Star Cops deserved to last only nine episodes.
But sometimes, such threatened cancellations can
really hurt. The latest victim of the rumours
circuit is Roswell High. If you believe everything
you hear, then all we may ever get to see of this
strangest of strange love stories between Liz
Parker and Max Evans is twenty two episodes. Just
one season of looking at a world of hormone charged
teen angst set amid the staggering New Mexico
landscape. A mere six months worth of stories of
alien children and suspicious adults.
Roswell
('High' suffix added only for overseas
sales) is one of the best new series (SF or
otherwise) to have emerged from the US in the last
five years. It's right up there with
Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Stargate SG-1. Yes, it really is that
good.
For those of you
who have never watched it on Sky, you're missing
out on a genuinely impressive piece of imaginative,
clever cross-genre television. A teen soap that
wants to be science fiction, or an SF show with
pretensions to be Dawson's Creek? In reality
Roswell
High is
both. And it's neither. In actualy fact, it's so
much better than any oneline description of it
that, like Buffy, you have to wonder how it was that
the series ever got off the ground in the first
place. But once it did, it matured rapidly, showing
a fine ability to be wryly amusing whilst keeping
the dramatic storylines of creator Jason Katims and
executive producer Jonathan Frakes never far from
the surface.
So, the question
has to be asked: Why on Earth is Roswell
High in
trouble with its ratings at all? Everybody should
be watching it. The simple truth is that
Roswell is possibly a victim of its own
chameleonic abilities. Many viewers simply don't
know what to make of it. The series to which it is
most akin, Buffy, also had these problems early on
when its critical standing was far higher than its
audience appreciation. Roswell High's very clear agenda, from
episode one really, was to stand aloof from the
vast lore of the town that gave the series its name
and to send up the whole idea of little green men
and dodgy autopsy footage (the episode
The
Convention which poked merciless fun at SF and
UFO conventions and all of the stereotypes that
they throw up, is particularly noteworthy here).
So, if
Roswell
doesn't
want to be a series that takes the staple elements
of your average SF concept (and it seemingly
doesn't) then what, exactly, does it have that
makes it so watchable? So special? The answer to
that is simple. It's got a terrific cast. Again,
Buffy
is the
most obvious template here; an ensemble piece
centered around, but not exclusive to, a pair of
central characters with comic and aesthetically
interesting foils that can be paired off to great
effect. (Anybody else see an obvious link between
Maria's role in Roswell High and Willow's in
Buffy? Or compare the pairing of Isabel
and Alex with Cordelia and Xander?) Ultimately,
like Buffy, Roswell features a superb bunch
of young actors: Shiri Appleby (Liz Parker), Jason
Behr (Max Evans), Brendan Fehr (Michael Guerin),
Katherine Heigl (Isabel Evans), Majandra Delfino
(Maria DeLuca), Colin Hanks (Alex Whitman) and Nick
Wechsler (Kyle Valenti), all of whom are attractive
and charismatic and can do comedy and dramy in
equal measure.
Beside them are
some equally impressive representatives of the
older generation; actors like William Sadler, Julie
Benz and Mary Ellen Trainor who add the same
anchoring qualities to proceedings here that
Anthony Stewart Head and Kristine Sutherland bring
to Buffy. But where Roswell goes even further than Sunnydale's
finest is that it can afford to drop its adult
characters at will and spend entire episodes
concentrating purely on its teenage stars and the
sometimes near-the-knuckle nature of their trials
and tribulations. (Buffy, of example, was well into its
second year before it got anywhere near doing a
storyline on child-abuse with Ted. Conversely,
Roswell was doing so, openly and with an
sense of outrage, by episode fifteen -- the
staggeringly adult Independence Day).
The back story of
Roswell
High is
relatively straightforward. Liz Parker is a highly
intelligent sixteen year old high school girl from
UFO mecca Roswell, New Mexico, working in her spare
time as a waitress at her parents diner, the
Crashdown, with her feisty friend Maria DeLuca. One
evening, whilst on shift, she is shot during a
argument by two meathead customers. As Liz lies,
dying, on the diner floor her life is saved by a
mysterious "laying on of hands" by the darkly
brooding local hunk, Max Evans. Liz keeps Max's
gift a secret but, when confronting him with it
later, he is forced to reveal that he, his
glamourous sister Isabel, and their wild-outsider
friend Michael Guerin are not from 'around here'.
They are from... 'up there'.
After an
effective pilot that sets up the characters nicely
and displays a keen sense of dry humour, subsequent
episodes detail the alien trio's search for clues
as to their ancestry, whilst simultaneously
attempting to hide their secret from sinister local
sheriff Valenti, whose son is Liz's ex-boyfriend
and who has his own agenda for wanting to discover
aliens in Roswell, and the attentions of the
alluring but mysterious school counsellor Kate
Topolsky. Writers like Thania St John (a
Buffy veteran) and Cheryl Cain tap
effortlessly into the teenage psyche and episodes
like Monsters (focusing on the uneasy alliance
between Maria and Isabel), 285 South ( a mini-road movie) and
River Dog
(where
Topolsky's elaborate trap for the aliens comes
close to success) demonstrate an accurate
understanding of what, exactly, makes these
characters so interesting.
The outrageous
sexual undercurrents of an episode like
Heat Wave
shouldn't
be underestimated either, whilst St John's epic
The
Balance
casts the group into Michael's psyche in an effort
ot save him, literally, from himself. In
Roswell High there are frequent revelations and
dramatic twists, but there are also moments of
quiet reflection and touching resonance
(Sexual
Healing)
that takes the viewer a long way from where they
probably imagined they were going to in a seriers
about alien teenagers. A character like Alex, for
instance, appears at first glance to be nothing
more than a literal Zeppo. A comic wall for the
others to bounce insults and sarcasm off. But
Roswell's
view of
outsiders is essentially proactive. Again, like
Buffy, here all of the characters have
something to stand outside of and be embittered by.
And for that reason, if nothing else,
Roswell
scores again over many of its contemporaries.
The world of
Roswell High School is a world in which growing up
and becoming normal may be a horrible reality for
some, but it is also an impossible dram for others.
Roswell began well in the US, a Wednesday
night feature on the WB network fitting perfectly
into the mid-evening slot that Buffy had made its own on
Tuesday. But the ratings have been sluggish as
conservative viewers opt for less challenging (and,
as a consequence, less demanding
television).
It's difficult
not to criticise heavily those who choose to watch
Who Wants
to Be a Millionaire, ahead of Roswell (although to be fair, earlier in
the season, Roswell's competition included
Star Trek:
Voyager
and NBC's acclaimed West Wing). The WB have got nervous and, in
an effort to attract new viewers have taken the
desperate step of moving Roswell to Monday nights. Initial response
seems positive but it remains to be seen if, in the
long term, Roswell has any sort of future. If there's
any justice in the world (which, in television
terms, there usually isn't) it will.
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