Friday, April 26, 2013

Alphas: Season One

Alphas: Season One
[DVD Alphas]

Alphas was an original series produced for the Syfy (formerly the SciFi) US cable network. Unlike a lot of Syfy's other, more outlandish series, Alphas was grounded in a contemporary world only slightly different from our own. David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd) starred as Dr. Lee Rosen, a scientist studying the increasing numbers of humans who have evolved much more highly developed physical and mental abilities than the average man. He has put together a team of some of these "Alphas" to help him locate more of these people, before they do harm to themselves or others. Alphas was a quirky mix of crime procedural -- some newly developed Alphas used their special abilities to commit crimes -- and plausible science fiction. The series, sadly, was cancelled after only two seasons and the libraries currently do not own season two. But I do recommend sampling season one, in the hopes that season two will be added to the collection eventually. The writing, acting and production values were top notch, and the characters were definitely people you could grow to care about. [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Eureka, and Warehouse 13, also both produced for the Syfy network, and set in contemporary times. There are also strong similarities between Alphas and the general underlying plots of the X-Men feature films and the syndicated scifi series Mutant X, which aired from 2001 to 2004.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library [Subscribe to Scott's monthly booklist newsletter It's All Geek to Me! - on the Books, Movies & More newsletter sign-up page].

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this series ] | [ Syfy's official Alphas web site ]

Have you watched this one, or read the original book? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

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